In Qinghai province, Yangqu county, a controversial hydroelectric station has already started preliminary construction work without an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), despite potential ecological and environmental risks.
The Qinghai Forestry Administration recently completed a feasibility study which may provide a green-light for the project. However, there were no ecologists among the committee who worked on the study; constituent members included representatives from the provincial government, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, and investors. Moreover, the EIA begun in 2009 has still not been released.
In February of this year, eight environmental NGOs and 47 botanists jointly signed and sent a letter to the head of the Qinghai Bureau of Environmental Protection calling on the bureau to adopt measures to save and protect the rare Chinese tamarisk forest indigenous to this area.
