Rejuvenated Guangdong waterway bustles with activity again

The Lianjiang, a river that flows through Guangdong province, was in pristine condition before years of development in its densely populated basin area in the early 1990s left the waterway black and odorous.

When members of a central government environmental inspection team visited the Lianjiang in 2018, they said there was almost no oxygen in the water, and no aquatic life could survive in the river.

However, in the past four years, the Lianjiang, which flows into the sea in the city of Shantou, has been gradually rejuvenated.

The odor has gone from many stretches of the river that locals used to avoid as much as possible. Tourists have also returned to the Lianjiang, along with waterfowl.

The changes made to the river are just a small part of the environmental transformation resulting from the inspection missions, which were launched in 2016.

This work has smoothed the path to an ecological civilization, a concept promoted by President Xi Jinping for balanced and sustainable development featuring harmonious coexistence of mankind and nature.

Zhai Qing, vice-minister of ecology and environment, said central environmental inspections are a major institutional innovation that Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, planned, made decisions about, and promoted personally.

At a news conference organized by the State Council Information Office on July 6, Zhai also said Xi delivered speeches and issued instructions several times when the inspection work reached a critical stage.

Inspection teams, which are usually led by ministerial-level officials, report to a central group led by Vice-Premier Han Zheng, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. The inspection office is based in the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

The direct cause of heavy pollution in the Lianjiang was inadequate capacity to dispose of wastewater in the river basin, according to the ministry. In 2018, for example, more than 600,000 metric tons of wastewater were generated in the Lianjiang Basin every day. However, the sewage disposal capacity barely met 50 percent of this demand.

Many textile printing and dyeing factories attracted to the Lianjiang Basin in the 1990s often directly discharged wastewater into the river, which became increasingly polluted.

When the inspectors visited the Lianjiang for the first time in late 2016, they gave the local authorities specific requirements to rectify violations that caused pollution in the river, with the Guangdong government drafting a rectification plan.

The inspectors routinely followed up rectification work and also revisited the river to check on progress. When they visited the Lianjiang again in 2018, however, they found that none of the 13 rectification programs planned by the government had been carried out.

Water samples taken from the Lianjiang by the inspectors were as black as ink. Tests showed that the oxygen density was only about 0.05 milligrams per cubic meter. Most fish cannot survive for long if this concentration is below 5 mg per cu m.

Shocked by the lack of progress with rectification work, Zhai, the vice-minister and also deputy head of the inspection team, suggested that leading Shantou government officials should live near the river to promote the work.

"They should live with residents along the Lianjiang until the water is no longer black and odorous," he said.

Six days after the inspectors left Shantou, Zheng Jiange, the city's mayor, arrived in the Lianjiang Basin with a rectification team, as Zhai suggested. Another 14 teams soon followed, headed by one of the city's leading officials, Ma Wentian, its Party chief who had just been transferred to the post, according to a report in Legal Daily.

The newspaper, which is based in Beijing, said each team was stationed alongside one of the Lianjiang's 15 most-polluted tributaries, but it did not disclose how long the teams stayed by the river.

In July 2018, Li Xi, the Guangdong Party chief, conducted an investigation tour of the Lianjiang, after which former Guangdong governor Ma Xingrui visited the river every six months to monitor rectification progress.

According to a guideline issued by the central authorities on the rectification work, top officials from provincial-level Party committees and governments should shoulder primary responsibility for dealing with violations found by the inspectors.

Party committees and governments at this level should also work out a mechanism for the rectification work, coordinate efforts among government bodies, and monitor progress, according to the guideline.

Zheng, the mayor, said central environmental inspections helped reverse the lack of progress with environmental management in the Lianjiang Basin. Different departments were made aware of their duties, and effective measures were introduced to resolutely promote governance.

Soon after Zheng arrived in the Lianjiang Basin with his team, some buildings that had encroached onto the river in a village were demolished. Occupying a total area of 13,000 square meters, the buildings, which were built three decades ago, were torn down just in five days, according to the local authorities.

The land on which the buildings stood was used to build a sewage pipe network.

Investment made

Lai Haibin, director of the Guangdong provincial environmental inspection office, said many local officials and residents thought it was impossible to treat the Lianjiang because it was so polluted. The local authorities were hesitant about investing in pollution control measures in the river basin.

However, in the 18 months after the inspectors left Shantou in 2018, the city invested 23.9 billion yuan ($3.6 billion) on major pollution control projects in the basin area, including the expansion of 10 sewage treatment plants and their supporting pipe networks, Lai said.

On Jan 1, 2019, the city authorities suspended the operations of 183 textile printing and dyeing factories in the river basin, accelerating the construction of special industrial parks with complete sewage treatment facilities. Many companies have since moved into these parks.

In addition, sewage pipes have been extended to all villages in the river basin. The low proportion of wastewater collected for disposal, and the direct discharge of sewage, have been addressed, according to the local authorities.

From 2018 to last year, the river's water quality rose from below Grade V, the worst level in the nation's five-tier quality system for surface water, to Grade IV－the best quality the Lianjiang had seen since 2004.

Zhai, the vice-minister, said the direct discharge of sewage into the river was just one of a large number of environmental problems that went unresolved for an extended period.

When the first round of inspections concluded in 2018, a total of 3,294 major violations were found to require rectification, Zhai said. To date, 95 percent of these cases have been resolved.

Despite only the first three of six inspections in the second round being completed by the middle of last year, rectifications have now been made to 50 percent of the 1,227 violations that were found, he added.

Zhai said one of the first things inspectors do after they arrive in an area is to provide the public with their contact details. To date, members of the public have reported some 287,000 local environmental problems, and the vast majority of them have been resolved.

The inspections have set many regions on a green development path, with ecological protection the priority to balance economic, environmental and social gains, Zhai said.

"In recent years, the inspections have increased the public appeal of Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization," he said.

There has been a high degree of consensus within the Party and throughout society that "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets", he said. This concept was first put forward by Xi when he was the top official in Zhejiang province in 2005.

Different levels of Party committees and governments have attached significantly more importance to the construction of ecological civilization and ecological and environmental protection.

Kong Shu, who lives near the Lianjiang in Shantou, was quoted by China Environment News as saying that tremendous changes have been made to the river.

"We used to stay away from it as much as possible. Now, the greenways and parks near the river are bustling, especially at night. People are happy to stroll, sing and dance by the Lianjiang," Kong said.