Air quality issues found in Shaanxi

Poor efforts to cut coal use and upgrade the industrial structure in Shaanxi province contributed to a worsening in air quality last year in Xi'an and other cities, environmental inspectors from the central government said on Tuesday.

During a monthlong inspection that started on Nov 28, officials identified 1,309 pollution problems in the province, according to Li Jiaxiang, who headed the team of inspectors.

As of the end of February, 222 polluting companies had been shut down and 26 people found responsible for pollution were detained, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said in a statement.

In addition, 492 government officials from the province were summoned to talk with the inspectors and 938 officials were held accountable for poor performance in pollution controls, the ministry said.

It is the first province in the second round of central-level environmental inspections that received the results.

The other six provincial-level regions, including Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing, will receive their results in the coming days.

The teams of central inspectors, headed by ministerial-level officials, set out on a pilot monthlong inspection in Hebei province on Jan 4, 2016.

Between then and Dec 30, they have held two rounds of inspections covering another 15 provincial-level regions.

"In these 16 provincial regions, over 6,300 government officials were summoned for talks and another 6,400 were held accountable," Chen Jining, minister of environmental protection, said last month.

The inspectors will visit the remaining 15 provincial-level regions this year, the minister said.

In Shaanxi, inspectors found mass problems like weak government efforts to keep pollutants from being discharged and a deterioration of the environment.

For example, the Shaanxi Development and Reform Commission failed to reduce coal consumption. In 2014, the province lowered the coal consumption in large companies by 2.95 million metric tons, while the reduction goal was 10 million tons, according to the ministry's statement on Tuesday.

In 2015, the reduction goal was missed again. The reform commission was supposed to cut the coal consumption by 3 million tons, but the reduction was only 110,000.

In addition, three coal-fired power plants in Xianyang that were required to reduce coal consumption actually increased it by over 180,000 tons.

The ministry blamed the worsening air quality in Xi'an and Xianyang last year - with both added to the severely polluted list - on weak controls over coal consumption and other poorly implemented pollution control policies.

zhengjinran@chinadaily.com.cn