Great risks have been found with the location of chemical and
petrochemical operations around China's main sources of water and
preventive and responsive mechanisms should be improved, according
to a press release issued yesterday by the nation's top
environmental watchdog.
Lessons were learned from the Songhua River pollution
incident?last November. In order to tackle environmental risks
associated with the chemical and petrochemical industries in major
areas of water, the State Environmental Protection Administration
(SEPA), in cooperation with local environmental protection agencies
nationwide, launched on February 7 a stringent inspection program
designed to eliminate any possible pollution caused by these
industries.
Some 127 projects with total investments of 450 billion yuan
(US$55 billion) were selected for the program. SEPA directly
inspected 20 of them and published the results yesterday. The
remaining 107 are still under the inspection of local environmental
protection agencies and the results will be published before May
20.
"SEPA targeted the 20 large projects because there is potential
danger due to their sensitive locations," Pan Yue, vice director of
SEPA, said yesterday. Of these projects, 11 are located in the
Yangtze River valley including one in the Three Gorges Reservoir
area and two along the Tanglang River, a tributary of Yangtze, in
the lower reaches of Dianchi Lake.?
The remaining nine projects include one in the Yellow River
valley, two in Dalian Bay, one each in Dayao Bay, Jiaozhou Bay and
Hangzhou Bay, and one on the bank of the South China Sea.
Among these projects some are new and the others are being
expanded. They are either important petrochemical businesses
involving oil refining and ethylene or hot chemical projects
involving methanol and polycarbonate.
The total investment of these 20 projects was 60.57 billion
(US$7.56 billion). As a result of the inspection, 1.6 billion yuan
(US$197 million) more will be invested as special fund to improve
their environmental protection facilities, with an initial input of
589 million yuan (US$74 million) already at hand, according to
Pan.
?
The mid-term results reveal that four risks have been identified as
prominent with these chemical and petrochemical plants adjacent to
major waterways in China. Issues highlighted include:
Unreasonable distribution. Some chemical and
petrochemical plants are located upstream of the water source or
close to residential areas, which has the potential to pose a
health threat.?
Unreasonable development. A lot of new chemical
plants were built and existing facilities expanded despite limited
environmental resources. The banks of important water sources were
dotted with chemical plants and docking facilities for dangerous
chemical products.
Unclear system of accountability due to erratic
planning. A unified regional environmental risks response
plan, monitoring system and risk prevention measures were
required.
Low environmental risk consciousness and imperfection in
preventive and response mechanisms.
"Environmental risks caused by unreasonable distribution cannot
be solved in one or two days as relocation of these projects would
incur huge costs," said Pan. "Some passive remedial measures have
to be taken to reduce the risks."
In the future, environmental risk evaluation should be conducted
before approval is given to a variety of large projects.
Environmental risks caused by the unreasonable distribution of
industry in the past few years could only be solved gradually by
industry restructuring itself, Pan added.
(China.org.cn by Zhang Yunxing, April 6, 2006)