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China's environmental watchdog is investigating a recent river contamination incident after it learned that local authorities ignored the recommendations of its own environmental agency to shut down the plant responsible for the contamination months ago. 

Earlier this month, untreated waste from a distillery in the municipality of Hailin was discharged into the Hailin River, which flowed downstream and seriously affected water supplies in Mudanjiang, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, with a population of 2.7 million people.

"The Hailin Xueyuan Distillery is largely responsible for the water pollution in Mudanjiang," according to a joint statement issued by the Ministry of Supervision (MOS) and the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) on Monday.

The environmental protection bureau of Hailin city submitted a report to the Hailin municipal government in December 2005, recommending that the plant be shut down.

"However, the Hailin municipal government failed to order the shutdown of the distillery," the statement read, noting also that the local government's inaction resulted in the sustained and illegal discharge of pollutants into the river.

On February 19, aquatic fungus was found to have blocked a water supply source in Mudanjiang. Sticky, yellow globs frightened city residents of the city and prompting the local government to take a series of precautionary measures.

The fungus was later confirmed to be the result of the excessive discharge of pollutants by the distillery.

According to SEPA and MOS, the distillery built an alcohol production line without having first gone through an environmental impact assessment, and put the line into operation in the absence of waste-water treatment facilities, dumping "highly-concentrated polluted water into the Hailang River", a tributary of the Mudanjiang River.

SEPA and MOS also confirmed that the Hailin Xueyuan Beer Co. and Hailin Food Co. were found guilty of discharging amounts of pollutants that were beyond the legal limit.

SEPA and MOS have demanded that the enterprises suspend production. They will only be allowed to resume production after the provincial environmental authority confirms that waste-water treatment facilities meet with environmental standards.

This is the first time that the two central government departments are jointly handling pollution incidents since the central government issued last week a set of regulations aimed at punishing government officials responsible for environmental damage.

The statement also listed three other cases involving the violation of environment-related laws, saying that probes into the four cases will come under the direct supervision of the two departments.

"The four cases must be handled in the first quarter of this year," Sun Huaixin, an MOS official told Xinhua.

The three other pollution investigations to be supervised by the SEPA and MOS include the "local policies and regulations" formulated by Xinzhou city in north China's Shanxi Province, which reportedly violate national environment laws.

Also to be investigated is a manganese pollution incident at the border area between Guizhou and Hunan provinces and Chongqing Municipality.

The fourth case involves environmental damage by the Baimei Paper Enterprise in Yuzhong County in northwest China's Gansu Province.

"All local policies and regulations that violate national environmental protection laws and regulations must be rescinded," the joint statement added.

SEPA and MOS also demanded strong measures against polluting enterprises, saying that they must be shutdown if they do not install sufficient pollution treatment facilities.

The statement warned that officials who obstruct the enforcement of pollution regulations will be punished.

Following two decades of rapid economic development that has improved standards of living for hundreds of millions of people, China grows increasingly concerned about air, water and soil pollution.

In their unbridled pursuit of economic growth, many local governments formulated policies and regulations to attract enterprise investment, irrespective of their environmental policies. Some local government officials even went so far as to assured polluters that environmental regulations and laws would not be enforced against them.

The chemical spill into the Songhua River in November last year sounded an alarm over the seriousness of the country's degenerating environment, prompting the central government to take a series of measures against polluters.

"For a long time it was difficult to tackle polluters head-on due to the lack of regulations targeting officials who back the polluters," Sun said.

Now that much-needed regulations are in place, "our law enforcement work will be greatly enhanced," he said, adding that the MOS and SEPA will soon announce other pollution cases that they will jointly investigate.

(Xinhua News Agency February 28, 2006)