China’s Environmental Protection Ministry has fined 88 businesses in the northern part of the country for polluting groundwater sources.
A spokesman told reporters on May 9 that the ministry had checked 25,875 companies that discharge wastewater, focusing on enterprises located in Beijing and Tianjin municipalities.
The probe uncovered 558 violations of regulations on effluent discharge. In addition, it found that 55 companies were using seepage wells, sewage pits or ditches with no anti-leakage measures or facilities to store the polluted water.
A ministry report on “The handling of important environmental pollution events in the first quarter of 2013” details 13 significant cases of environmental pollution so far this year, four of them in the plains of Northern China. The cases are all related to wastewater disposal.
The businesses posing the greatest threat in the area are mainly poultry farming enterprises and heavy metal and chemical industries.
Wang Feng Chun, deputy inspector with the National People’s Congress Environmental and Resources Protection Committee, says that routine testing for groundwater pollution is relatively complex, as the country currently does not have a complete monitoring system for its underground water sources. Since the water flows rather than remaining static, pollution found in the Northern Plains does not necessarily originate there, and so inspectors need to branch out beyond the affected region to find the pollution source, Wang said.
Monitoring of sewage disposal from businesses and industries, on the other hand, is comparatively easy, and is the first potential culprit that needs to be excluded when investigating groundwater pollution.
The main reason that so many commercial enterprises illegally discharge their wastewater is the low cost of violating the law.
For example, fines for the 88 polluting enterprises totaled just under $1 million USD.
Average fines for water pollution are less than $12,000 USD.
Zhou Hong Chun, of the development research center at the state council, said the range of fines for illegal wastewater disposal should be increased.
