The State Environmental Protection Administration
(SEPA) yesterday
ordered the suspension of four construction projects for violating
environmental protection laws and regulations.
"The projects should have applied for the checking
of their environmental protection facilities before being put into
operation upon completion of construction," said the SEPA in a
statement.
It said all four projects were put into production
or trial operation before applying to environmental protection
authorities for inspection.
The projects involved are a coal power plant and a
chemical fertilizer plant in northeast China's Liaoning
Province, a cement plant in the southern province of Guangdong
and part of an expressway running through a suburb of Tianjin
Municipality.
The law stipulates that the environmental
protection facilities of a construction project should be designed,
constructed and put into use simultaneously with the project.
After construction is completed, the project should
first apply to environmental protection departments for approval of
environmental protection facilities before going into
operation.
In the statement, the SEPA asked the four projects
to follow environmental checking procedures immediately and listed
a series of unreported penalties.
On January 18, the SEPA ordered the suspension of
30 large construction projects worth billions of US dollars for
violating environmental impact assessment laws.
Twenty-two of them, mostly hydropower stations,
thermal power plants and other power projects, complied by January
24, and all had by February 3.
(Xinhua News Agency October 26, 2005)