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Local officials face penalties over pollution

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-09-11 17:23

JINAN -- China's environment watchdog has warned local government leaders that they face penalties over failures to clean up the country's major rivers and lakes.

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The Ministry of Environment Protection on Wednesday put the leaders of 21 provincial-level governments on notice that they would be held personally accountable for the continued pollution of seven main waterways.

The ministry announced the measure at a national meeting on water pollution prevention in east China's Jinan, which was attended by officials from the National Development and Reform Commission and the ministries of supervision, finance, housing and urban-rural development.

Environmental Protection Minister Zhou Shengxian told the meeting that the new measure would take effect early next year, although he did not reveal what penalties would be handed out.

The 21 governments had given the ministry annual targets in their plans for pollution prevention in the basins of the Huaihe, Haihe, Liaohe, Songhua rivers, the middle and upper streams of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers as well Chaohu and Dianchi lakes.

The plans were based on a five-year national guideline (2006-2010) to protect the water resources.

Zhou said the ministry would hold specific officials responsible for any failures to meet the targets, but he did not say which provinces missed their goals for the past two years.

"Through the evaluation system, the ministry will reinforce its supervision of local government implementation of the state's environmental protection objectives," said Zhang Bo, deputy director of Shandong Provincial Bureau of Environmental Protection, after the meeting.

He said the ministry also required the local governments to publish their annual goals on pollution control for public scrutiny.

The Chinese government has set a target of reducing major water pollutant emissions by 10 percent from 2005 levels by 2010.

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