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January 22, 2011

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Two cases of tainted land

A. Songjiazhuang poisoning
On April 28, 2004, a poisoning incident took place during the construction of Songjiazhuang Metro Station.

The site had previously housed a 1970s-era pesticide plant. Though the plant had been removed many years earlier, large quantities of residual poisonous gases remained trapped underground.

Three workers collapsed when the drilling operation reached 5 meters. They were sent to the hospital, and the site was closed. Consequently, the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau conducted site monitoring and took remediation measures.

Contaminated soil at the site was later excavated, transported, and incinerated. The incident marks the beginning of the remediation and redevelopment of industrial contaminated land in China.

(Source: Xinhua)

B. Sanjiang housing project
In 2006, an 18.7 hectare parcel of land in Wuhan, the largest industrial city in central China, was sold to Sanjiang Real Estate for residential development.

The land is on the water front of the Han River and was deemed very valuable for residential development. Four years later, however, the land remains vacant, devoid of any of the planned development. Shortly after construction began, the soil was found to contain large amounts of pesticide residuals on the old site of the Hanyang Pesticide Factory.

Several construction workers were poisoned and hospitalized. The seller, Wuhan Land Reserve Center, had to pay 120 million yuan (US$18.2 million today) in compensation to Sanjiang Real Estate because it had failed to perform an adequate site assessment before the transaction.
(Source: Times Weekly)



 

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