A stinging attack on local government negligence in environmental protection from the Party mouthpiece:
Official dereliction of duty has been blamed for a mass poisoning case triggered by a factory in Gansu Province that belched out 800 times the acceptable level of lead. The deputy head of China’s top environmental watchdog slammed the role of the local government and environment bureau, and called for harsh punishments.
In another case that came in for severe criticism, two factories in Hunan Province were found last week to have polluted a local river with arsenic, jeopardizing the drinking water safety of 80,000 people.
“The plants appeared to cause the pollution, but in fact the root of the problem lies in the local governments, and local protectionism,” said Pan Yue, deputy director of the State Environment Protection Administration (SEPA) yesterday…He described the cases as “typical examples of pollution problems caused by a dereliction of duty of local governments and environment bureaux.” [Full Text]
The criticism follows a series of stories in Western papers about environmental disasters mishandled by local governments; see the New York Times on chemical pollution in Zhejiang.
Technorati Tags: China, water pollution
