Rescue Dali "Cangshan Wuxi"
China News Weekly Reporter / Xu Dawei
Issued in 2020.5.18 total issue 947 "China News Weekly"
An ecological governance project with an investment of 300 million yuan has recently been fiercely questioned for "destroying the ecology".
On April 20th, volunteers from the environmental organization "Wild China" conducted routine fixed-point stream observations near Baihe Creek in Cangshan, Dali, Yunnan, and saw that workers were constructing streams and large amounts of concrete were smeared on the bottom The river embankments on both sides are raised with small stones and mortared with cement.
In the eyes of environmentalists, the operation of "cementing cement" at the bottom of the river is a hardened river channel with "three sides of light", which changes the state of the natural river channel that "breathes".
Questioning emotions pervaded like a wildfire among the group of environmental protection volunteers. The local government quickly stopped the project and took the initiative to contact environmental protection organizations and volunteers to listen to public opinions and make plan amendments.
In recent years, Dali has invested a great deal in the environmental governance of the Erhai Lake Basin, but around the governance concept and governance methods, environmental organizations and the government have a fierce game. This is not the first time that controversy has arisen due to the management of Cangshan streams. Cangshan Mountain has a total of 19 peaks from north to south. Between the two peaks, there is a stream of water flowing down from the mountain, a total of 18 streams. In addition to the five streams, 13 other streams have successively passed through the course of hardening prevention of debris flows.
The 13 streams have become a lesson for the car, making "Five Streams Governance" an ecologically sensitive event that has attracted much attention. It is also the last line of defense that environmental organizations are determined to protect.
Hardening question
There are 19 peaks and 18 streams among them, which is a wonder of Cangshan Mountain.
Eighteen streams in Cangshan, starting from Xizhou in the north and reaching Xiaguan in the south, stretch for 45 kilometers and are parallel to the Erhai Lake. Eighteen streams take Cangshan Mountain as the source and merge into Erhai Lake from west to east. The stream connects Cangshan and Erhai Lake, which accounts for about 30% of the recharge water of Erhai Lake. It is a living ecological corridor connecting Cangshan Erhai Lake.
The controversial project is located in Baihexi. According to official information, Baihe Creek Governance belongs to the project of "Cangshan Eighteen Streams into the Lake in Dali City" (Wuxi River Control Project). The project was launched on December 29, 2019, with a total investment of approximately 300 million yuan. In addition to Baihe Creek, the project also involves Mocan Creek, Qingbi Creek, Zhonghe Creek, and Taoxi Creek. These five streams flow through the most concentrated areas of population and tourism development in Dali Erhai Hercynian.
The environmental protection department of Dali Prefecture has conducted an environmental assessment of the Wuxi Remediation Project. According to the contour line of the general layout of the "Five Streams Control Project" obtained by "China News Weekly", the entire project is below the red line at 2,200 meters above sea level in Cangshan, and above 2,200 meters is the scope of national nature reserves. The project is not within the protection zone.
However, for this project, the focus of environmental organizations questioned is: Is it necessary to harden the river? River hardening is to lay the earthy river bed of a natural river channel with concrete slabs or stones to form an artificial hard river bed. Environmental protection volunteers told China News Weekly that the hardened construction sections of the stream are mainly concentrated in the area west of the 214 National Highway.
For the "three-sided light" hardening construction, the designer explained that the upstream section has a large longitudinal slope and serious hydraulic erosion. For the section of the river that is damaged and the bottom of the embankment is hollowed out, the concrete structure is used to strengthen and strengthen, which is not the case. When anti-seepage is required for the river section, clay is used for anti-seepage.
The management project of Wuxi River is managed by Dali Provincial Tourism Resort Management Committee. Li Zhidong, deputy secretary of the party committee of the resort and director of the management committee, told China News Weekly that the hardened rivers accounted for only a small part. The reason for the hardening is to consider the safety of roads and bridges. "The stream flows through bridges and roads. If it is not hardened, the flood control requirements cannot be fulfilled. "
However, many environmentalists told China News Weekly that the hardening of the river channel means the loss of biodiversity, the river channel loses its ability to purify itself, the water and soil conservation function is artificially blocked, and the acceleration of the water flow has increased the pressure on the road culvert. Going against the goals of the project.
What is the purpose of the project? It has become a problem that both parties to the dispute cannot get around.
An information note provided by the Management Committee to China News Weekly stated, "Because of the poor water quality of the Wuxi Lake, the task of flooding is arduous and governance is imminent." The specific objectives of the project are: by the end of 2020, the quality of the water entering the lake will basically reach Class III or above, restore the circulation of the stream, and basically achieve the normal annual scene, the river will continue to flow all the year round, the sediment and sand of the river section will be cleared, the natural recovery ability of aquatic plants will be enhanced, Improvement of self-purification ability and flood discharge ability.
In short, the Wuxi Remediation Project has three core goals: one is to clean water into the Erhai Lake; the other is to improve the self-purification of the stream and the ability to discharge flood water; the third is to solve the problem of interruption of flow and ensure that there is water all year round.
But these three goals have also raised questions from environmentalists and related scholars. Xi Zhinong, the founder of "Wild China", believes that in order to reach clean water into the lake, the focus is to intercept pollution, including domestic sewage, farmland non-point source pollution, and domestic garbage not to enter the stream, so that it is possible to achieve clean water into the lake, "block pollutants When entering the stream, the clear water naturally enters the lake, and don't keep thinking about constantly renovating and tossing the stream with engineering methods. "
Yu Kongjian, Dean of the School of Architecture and Landscape Design at Peking University, holds the same view. Yu Kongjian told China News Weekly that the pollution problem of Dali Erhai Lake is actually not related to the stream itself. The source of pollution in Erhai Lake is urban and rural domestic sewage, as well as agricultural non-point source pollution on Dali Dam.
In fact, the water quality of Cangshan Eighteen Creek is generally good. According to the "Announcement on the Water Quality of the Erhai Lake and the Main Rivers Entering the Lake" released in November 2019, all the streams in the Cangshan Eighteen Streams have no water, except for some of the broken streams.
Is it hard to make concrete hardened water channel to improve water quality? On April 21st, at the dialogue between the government and civil society on the Wuxi governance project, environmental volunteers raised this question.
Yu Kongjian believes that after seepage hardening of the river channel, while the water flow is accelerated, the destructive power of the water will increase. The hardening of the river channel can neither solve the problem of flood control nor the problem of purification. Wang Zhenhong, a professor at the School of Water Conservancy and Environmental Sciences at Chang'an University, believes that "three-sided light" cannot solve the problem of river self-purification, and the ability of self-purification depends on the plants in the trench.
As for the flood discharge of the mountain stream, Chu Zhaosheng, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Environmental Sciences, told China News Weekly that as far as the Cangshan Eighteen Creek is concerned, there is no need to do anti-seepage and no need for artificial reconstruction. The flood control standards of the entire Cangshan Eighteen Stream are not high, and only need to be properly reinforced at bridges and other locations. Regarding the problem of flow interruption, he believes that the eighteen streams in Cangshan are generally short, and that part of the flow interruption is normal. What really deserves attention is that in recent years, the disorderly water intake along the Shibaxi River course has been serious, resulting in water shortage and water cutoff in the dry season. A piece of data shows that Taoxi, Zhonghe Creek, Baihe Creek, Qingbi Creek, and Mo Canxi Creek included in this ecological governance project have as many as 17 water intakes along the route.
EIA game
As early as 2012, Dali City began to systematically rehabilitate Cangshan Eighteen Streams, and proposed to achieve the goal of three million years of clear water entering the lake in three years.
According to the relevant governance plan of Dali City, the comprehensive treatment of Shibaxi River is divided into three sections: namely, 214 National Road is the upper section, 214 National Road to Dali Highway is the middle section, and Dali Highway to Eryuan Boundary Pile is the lower section. In the treatment plan, the upper section is dominated by stone interception and sand retention, the middle section is dominated by pollution interception, interception and dredging, and the lower section is dominated by interception and pollution control. The goal of Dali City is to ensure the safety of flooding of rivers and enhance the function of flood control through the treatment of heightening, strengthening, widening of river beds, and dredging of river channels.
Since then, many rounds of rectification of the Eighteen Creeks in Cangshan continued the above ideas. However, around the regulation of the Cangshan Eighteen Streams, the game between environmental volunteers and the government is fierce.
In 2018, the Dali Prefecture Land and Resources Bureau started the debris flow and river channel renovation project for 13 streams in Cangshan. The main contents are: Jiangufang dam, sand retaining dam, auxiliary dam, fixed bed dam, rib and dam, and the project scope is The above-mentioned streams have an elevation of 2000 ~ 2300 meters above sea level, and the reformed streams are all in the nature reserve experimental zone and ecological ecotone.
After the project started, a large number of artificial dams were built in the Thirteen Creeks of Cangshan. For example, in Mangyongxi, a river dam was built every two distances across both sides of the stream, and there were as many as five in a short distance. Xi Zhinong, the founder of Wild China, has shot nine different types of sand dams in the Shuangyangxi River section at an altitude of 2200 meters next to the Cangshan protection boundary. The water drop has been artificially increased. Under the huge water erosion in summer, some fixed bed ribs (generally arranged in places where the water erosion is serious to prevent the gully bed from being washed) have been emptied.
Environmental protection volunteers are worried about these dense dams. They believe that there has been no debris flow in the local area for decades. The debris flow prevention and river regulation projects have been started. There is doubt about the necessity of construction and there is suspicion of repeated construction.
In an opinion, Professor Wu Zhaolu of Yunnan University raised questions about the debris flow caused by the Cangshan Stream: How many disasters did the Cangshan Eighteen Stream cause? If so, what evidence? Compared with man-made disasters, how serious and frequent are these natural disasters? Where is the evidence?
China News Weekly consulted a document showing that from 1950 to 1993, there were more than 50 large-scale debris flows in Cangshan Eighteen Streams. Some scholars have put forward another point of view on the scientific nature of building dams at Cangshan Shibaxi. Wang Zhenhong, a professor at the School of Water Conservancy and Environmental Sciences of Chang'an University, told China News Weekly that the debris flow in Cangshan of Dali is mainly water and debris flow, and there are relatively few debris flows induced by landslides. Moreover, the streams in Cangshan are relatively steep. Therefore, it is useful to build Gufang Dam, sand retaining dam, auxiliary dam, fixed bed dam, rib and protection dyke to prevent the trench from undercutting and causing geological disasters.
However, there is not only one option for dam construction. Wang Zhenhong believes that the geological structure of Cangshan is relatively stable, mainly due to small geological disasters. For unstable trenches, it can be solved by engineering slope consolidation methods; in the downstream of the trenches, in order to reduce the loss of life and property, you can leave enough water and stone flow accumulation area, do not engage in construction, and do appropriate protection.
Environmental protection volunteers also raised another question: Dali Prefecture Land and Resources Bureau applied for special funds for the prevention and control of national geological disasters on the ground of preventing mudslides on the eastern slope of Cangshan, objectively bypassing the environmental impact assessment of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.
Environmental volunteers decided to take action. On July 23, 2018, the Chongqing Public River Environmental Culture Center filed an “administrative performance application” with the Yunnan Provincial Department of Environmental Protection (now Yunnan Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment), requesting that it be based on the “Environmental Protection Law of the People ’s Republic of China” and the “PRC The Environmental Impact Assessment Law immediately stopped the construction of Yunnan Province Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture ’s Land and Resources Bureau from “not evaluated first,” and made corresponding administrative penalties, requiring it to take ecological restoration measures to restore the ecology of the natural reserve stream. .
However, Yu Jianfeng, head of the Chongqing Public River Environmental Protection Center, told China News Weekly whether the EIA is needed for the 13 rivers, debris flows, and river improvement projects in Cangshan. Both the Dali Environmental Protection Bureau and the Yunnan Provincial Department of Environmental Protection believe that no EIA is required.
The Yunnan Provincial Department of Environmental Protection believes that the debris flow control project has not been included in the EIA list. According to the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" Environmental Impact Assessment Reform Implementation Plan of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the new environmental impacts or environmental risks that are not included in the classified management list are relatively new. For the industry, the environmental protection department at the provincial level determines its environmental rating and submits it to the Ministry of Environmental Protection for the record; for other items not included in the classification management list, there is no need to complete the environmental assessment procedures. Moreover, the Department of Land and Resources of Yunnan Province has included 13 rivers and other "debris flow geological disaster survey and treatment projects" in Qingbi River into the provincial geological disaster treatment project reserve, which is not an emerging industry with greater environmental impact or environmental risk.
In response to this statement, the environmental protection organization "Kunming Shanjiantian Environmental Protection Information Consultation Center" initiated a consultation with the Department of Environmental Impact Assessment and Emission Management of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment on whether the project requires an environmental impact assessment. In February 2019, the Environmental Impact Assessment and Emissions Management Department of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment wrote back that the project "should be included in the environmental impact assessment management of construction projects."
After receiving this feedback, the Chongqing Public River Environmental Culture Center filed an application for administrative duties with the Yunnan Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment again in February 2019, requesting the department to "build before construction" or "build before construction" Acts will make corresponding administrative punishment and seriously investigate related responsibilities.
On September 6, 2019, Dali Prefecture Bureau of Ecology and Environment notified Dali Natural Resources Bureau to perform environmental impact assessment procedures in accordance with the law, and put forward requirements on how to carry out EIA work. However, when the reply letter from the Yunnan Provincial Department of Environmental Protection was issued, the remediation of 13 streams was basically completed without "approval before construction" and could only be investigated.
Engineering shutdown
The local government responded quickly to the dispute over "Five Streams Governance" and showed a proactive communication attitude.
On April 21, the heads of the relevant departments of the Resort Management Committee called the owners, design and construction units and face-to-face talks with environmental volunteers. The Resort Management Committee also stated that it will invite environmental protection volunteers and netizens to actively participate in the project, provide comments and suggestions for the project, and at the same time, publish an opinion collection mailbox to the public.
The resort management committee told China News Weekly that the local government has organized well-known experts from provinces and states to hold an expert consultation meeting on Wuxi governance project to further consult and demonstrate the plan. Based on the opinions put forward by the experts and the landscape design concept of Beijing Turen Company, the winning bidder, the Central South Design Institute is optimizing the plan.
Li Zhidong, deputy secretary of the party committee and director of the management committee of Dali Tourism and Resorts, told China News Weekly that after the plan is perfect, they will invite experts to conduct further internal audits before releasing it to the public.
Yu Bo, a wild Chinese volunteer, told China News Weekly that the originally revised plan on May 6 will be sent to the Central South Institute of Wuhan for internal review, but the specific details of the new plan have not been officially reported by the environmental protection organization. Understand, the plan has not yet been announced.
At present, environmental protection volunteers are still worried about projects that have fallen into a "shutdown". A volunteer lamented "China News Weekly" that once a similar project is established, it is difficult to cancel it, and it may start after 15 days of suspension. Volunteers are currently seeking the involvement of multiple forces including higher-level environmental inspectors, local prosecution agencies and the media.
In Yu Kongjian's view, behind this storm of environmental controversy, it is actually a multiple choice question, whether to treat nature with industrial civilization thinking or ecological civilization thinking, "the confrontation between the two is no less than a revolution."
"China News Weekly" No.17, 2020
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