Courts to target major polluters
Print Edition
CHINA’S courts will widen the range of offenses that constitute “environmental crimes” to make it easier to take legal action against polluters, according to a senior judiciary official yesterday.
The new rules could allow prosecutors to take on persistent offenders in northern China’s Hebei Province, which was engulfed in heavy smog last week despite being on the frontline of China’s nearly three-year “war on pollution.”
Yan Maokun, head of a research office at the Supreme People’s Court, told reporters that authorities had struggled to gather evidence required to prosecute, according to a transcript of a briefing on the court’s website.
“Air pollution is different from water pollution or soil pollution, and it is extremely difficult to get evidence for air pollution crimes because after the pollution is emitted it undergoes a large degree of dispersal, and is very quickly diluted,” Yan said.
Prosecutors would focus on specific offenses such as tampering with sensor equipment or providing false emissions data, and firms found guilty would be punished regardless of the amount of pollution involved, he said.
“It doesn’t matter how much you emit because in fact that is very hard to detect, but if you have distorted or fabricated data or interfered with the operation of equipment, this ... will constitute an environmental crime,” Yan said.
Eight cities in Hebei launched red alerts last week in response to the smog, which reached record levels at some monitoring stations.
Hebei came under fire from the Ministry of Environmental Protection, and a number of its steel firms were singled out for failing to suspend operations.
Governor Zhang Qingwei said the province would learn lessons and step up its efforts.
“We need to seriously study and analyze our responses, sum up our experiences, and find problems and deficiencies in order to draw up more focused measures,” Zhang was quoted as saying on the local government’s website.
Experts say enforcement is lax amid concerns over the impact on economic growth and jobs in Hebei, which surrounds Beijing and is home to seven of China’s 10 smoggiest cities last year.
In the provincial capital of Shijiazhuang, average concentrations of the breathable particles known as PM2.5 were higher than 500 micrograms per cubic meter for three consecutive days last week — 50 times higher than World Health Organization recommendations.
Zhang said better “top-level planning” is needed as Hebei sought to adjust its industrial and energy structures.
Hebei is also to draw up more detailed plans to deal with issues such as the direct combustion of coal. It has declared 2017 a “year of transformation and upgrading.”
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