China Mulls Law to End Caps on Water Pollution Fines
Date: 27-Aug-07
Country: CHINA
China currently caps the amount that polluters can be fined,
in some case at a level lower than the cost of installing and
operating remedial equipment. Once polluters max out the fines,
there is also little incentive for them to stop.
Legal revisions to remove the cap and otherwise strengthen
the hand of the State Environmental Protection Administration
will be submitted to top lawmakers on Sunday, SEPA's vice
director of emissions control, Zhao Hualin, said on Saturday.
"When we had the massive spill in the Songhua River, we
could only fine them 1 million yuan (US$132,200), so we fined them
1 million yuan. But after the revisions to the law, there will
be basically no cap," he told a conference on emissions
reduction on Saturday.
China's leaders are increasingly paying attention to
environmental problems, as pollution darkens the air in cities
and endangers water supplies. They were spurred to action by an
80-km (50-mile) benzene slick in the Songhua River in late 2005,
which endangered drinking water supplies to millions in China
and Russia.
Beijing has twinned emissions reduction goals with a drive
to improve energy efficiency, as China's booming economic growth
eats into its coal resources and makes it more and more
dependent on imported crude oil.
"The revisions could also give SEPA tools other than fines,
for instance being able to require a plant to stop production,"
Zhao told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.
The environmental watchdog's bite has been softened by
China's governmental structure, which gives it little authority
over well-connected companies or local governments eager to
boost their region's economy.
SEPA has recently had some success in shutting non-compliant
plants, but is struggling to keep alive an initiative to assess
local government officials' performance based on "Green GDP" --
a matrix of factors that takes in environmental damage as well
as economic growth.
The national agency has recently set up five regional
bureaus, each with dozens of staffers, that allows it to extend
authority into the provinces.
But its provincial offices are still subordinate to their
local provincial government, which severely limits their power
to enforce rulings that counteract local interests.
Any change in that relationship would have to await a
broader government restructuring, and would have to be approved
by the annual full meeting of the nation People's Congress in
March.
Meanwhile, SEPA faces an uphill battle.
"Starting in 2000, there was a big push to install emissions
control equipment in enterprises nationwide. But over time, we
have found many don't bother to turn them on," Zhao told the
conference.
As many as 80 percent of enterprises in China's industrial
northeast may have non-compliant emissions equipment, Zhao said,
based on informal assessments by SEPA teams. Nationwide, that
figure is probably at least one-half.