Company reportedly reburied pollutants

A Gansu company that was punished last month for polluting the Tengger Desert by dumping untreated sludge and sewage failed to follow through with the cleanup task, according to a news report on Monday. Instead, the company covered up material it was supposed to remove.

Ronghua Industry & Trade Co in Wuwei, Gansu province, secretly discharged more than 83,000 metric tons of untreated sewage into a desert pit between May of last year and March, contaminating about 18 hectares east of the city, the Wuwei government said on March 21.

A cleanup was ordered, and most of the wastewater and mud was collected and transferred to sewage treatment plants. Some sludge and water was left in the bottom of a pit to be dealt with later, once research work at the site was completed, the city said.

But Changjiang Times, a newspaper in Hubei province, reported on Monday that some of the remaining material had been buried, and that a swath of pollution remained at the site.

During visits to the site on March 25 and 26, a reporter from the Times, Xiong Zixi, found that while most of the sewage water had been pumped out, the pit - about 1.4 hectares - gave off a strong, unpleasant odor.

Nearby the pit, saxaul plants, used as windbreaks and soil retainers, were dead, Xiong reported. Above the leftover sewage, black mud extended tens of meters around the pit.

In addition, part of the leftover sewage and sludge had been buried, which was not the treatment recommended by the researchers, the report said.

Xiong said that during his second visit he was surrounded by police officers and officials of the Liangzhou district government, where the company is located, along with police officers and officials of Ronghua Industry. He said he was detained for nine hours and was required to delete pictures documenting the pollution from his camera and cellphone.

The Wuwei city government could not be reached for comment on Sunday.

After the pollution incident was exposed on March 21, the company was shut down and fined 3 million yuan ($484,000). Its chairman has been under investigation for allegedly polluting the environment. Officials from the district and city governments have also been suspended.

"The lax supervision and slack law enforcement of the city's government is a major reason for the severe pollution in the desert. The cost of punishment was too small to deter violators," said Chang Jiwen, deputy director of the Research Institute of Resources and Environmental Policies at the State Council Development Research Center.

An auditing system is needed for natural resources that is tied to promotion of officials, Chang said.

zhengjinran@chinadaily.com.cn