Fill the pit? Dig a hole! This backfill project, why the more "filled" the pit, the bigger it gets

In the town of Malanyu in Zunhua City, Hebei Province, not far from the Qingdongling Tomb, villagers recently told us that there is a pit filling project in the town, which is to backfill the original sand pit and restore cultivated land. But from 2018 to now, the cultivated land has not been filled back, the pit has become larger and larger, until now such two tens of meters deep pits have been dug, and recently they have been digging 24 hours a day, what is going on?

In Yuhedong Village, Malanyu Town, Zunhua City, two large pits are next to the edge of the village.

According to the villagers, the 24-hour non-stop digging is the Malanyu Riqiang Iron Dressing Plant, an iron ore rough sorting and processing enterprise, and they are actually mining ore.

The two large pits are inside the factory area of the Riqiang Iron Selection Plant, and from the outside, the wall of the factory is three or four meters high. As can be seen from the drone footage, this factory area has about 1000,280 acres of land, and there are two huge deep pits. The large pit to the north is about 50 meters in diameter and about <> meters deep. The large pit on the south side is irregular in shape and slightly smaller in size. At the bottom of the pit there are five or six excavators and a dozen transporters, which are being mined in the open pit surface.

As can be seen from the picture, in the two large pits, the excavator with the hydraulic breaker first crushes the ore on the rock wall, and then the excavator with the bucket loads the ore and sand into the truck, and the transport vehicle slowly transports the pit along the ramp.

After the transport truck comes out of the big pit, it comes to a weighbridge weighing, and after weighing, it directly enters the processing workshop of the Riqiang Iron Sorting Plant, unloads the materials here, and then returns to the big pit to continue transportation, 24 hours non-stop mining.

This factory is divided into mining area, processing area, sales area, and around the processing workshop are stacked with different types, colors, and hill-like finished products. The ore and gravel mined from the pit are continuously transported to the front processing plant for processing into sand, stone and iron ore, which then sells these products to the outside world. Mining, processing, sales, the entire industrial chain is completed in this factory area.

According to villagers, the two large pits dug by the Riqiang Iron Dressing Plant occupied cultivated land in several nearby villages.

According to the archives of the Zunhua Municipal Bureau of Natural Resources and Planning, the plot had about three to four hundred acres of cultivated land on it at the time of the second national land survey. Villagers claim that around 2008, the Riqiang Iron Dressing Plant forcibly leased the farmland from farmers at a price of about 800 yuan per mu.

After forcibly leasing these cultivated lands, the Nichijo Iron Selection Plant began to excavate on these cultivated lands. According to China's Land Management Law, in order to turn cultivated land into mining land, you must first complete the procedures for changing construction land. So have these cultivated lands gone through land change procedures?

The reporter inquired with the relevant departments and learned that the land plot south of the Riqiang Railway Selection Plant had not gone through the procedures for changing the construction land.

Not only has the land change gone through, the reporter learned from the Zunhua City Natural Resources and Planning Bureau that the company has not applied for a mining license.

According to China's Mineral Resources Law, mining without obtaining a mining license is an act of illegal mining. On May 5, when the reporter came to the Riqiang Railway Sorting Plant, he found that the suspected illegal mining of the company was continuing, so he reported the situation to the Malanyu Town Government and the Zunhua City Resources and Planning Bureau. A few minutes after the reporter called, a construction worker came to the site.

Interviewer: "What are you doing?" ”

On-site construction worker: "We are here to dredge, fish, or farm." ”

Reporter: "Where to dig this and transport it?" ”

On-site construction crew: "Transported to the side." ”

Reporter: "How long has this fish pond been repaired?" ”

On-site construction personnel: "More than ten days. ”

Soon, the construction work inside the pit also changed, and we saw that the construction crews on the site quickly stopped mining and some of the equipment drove out of the pit.

The construction equipment left at the site has also changed from digging mode to pit filling mode, taking soil from the side of the large pit and transporting materials to the bottom of the pit to cover up the ore that has just been dug.

The road from the big pit to the processing workshop is also blocked with sand and gravel. When all this was done, all the construction vehicles and construction personnel left the site.

More than six hours after the reporter reported the situation to the relevant departments, the Maranyu Town Comprehensive Law Enforcement Team, the Zunhua Municipal Natural Resources and Planning Bureau Law Enforcement Supervision Brigade, and the Zunhua Municipal Public Security Bureau Environmental Safety Protection Brigade arrived one after another, formed a joint law enforcement team at the scene, and began to verify the reporting clues on the spot.

In the weighing room of the Nichiang Railway Sorting Plant, there are some weighing lists scattered. The weighing list on May 2023, 5 shows that they transported a total of about 5 truckloads and <>,<> tons of materials during the day and night on this day.

But what made the reporter feel strange was that the comprehensive law enforcement team of Malanyu Town only took photos of the mining area suspected of illegal mining by the Riqiang Iron Dressing Plant at the scene, and did not enter the processing area and sales area of the plant.

Soon, the staff of the Malanyu Town Comprehensive Law Enforcement Team drove away from the scene. The other two units of the joint enforcement team, law enforcement officers from the Zunhua Public Security Bureau and the Zunhua Natural Resources and Planning Bureau, said they had no right to interrogate the matter.

The next day, the reporter entered the processing workshop of the Riqiang Railway Sorting Plant, and the busy scene of vehicles transporting materials the other day disappeared, and there were obvious traces of leveling in the workshop, and a manager said that they had never processed the materials dug out of the big pit in the factory area.

The reporter broadcast on the spot the whole process of the construction personnel from mining in the big pit to transporting materials into the processing workshop filmed by drones the day before.

Reporter: "Just now it was a full car, and now it is an empty car." Are you aware of this situation? ”

Manager of Nichijo Railway Selection Plant: "It is possible to come to the road. ”

Reporter: "Is it possible to use 10 cars on the mat road here?" ”

Manager of Riqiang Railway Selection Plant: "10 cars must not be used, and it should not exist." ”

At the scene, the reporter saw some weighing lists of the Riqiang Iron Sorting Plant, which showed that three or four hundred truckloads of materials would be transported into the processing workshop in a day. So when did these two big pits of the Riqiang Iron Dressing Plant form? The reporter found the person in charge of the Malanyu Town Government to understand the situation.

According to the head of the town government, this is a backfill project organized by the town government. In 2016, the Zunhua municipal government requested that 206 sand pits in the city, including Malanyu Town, be uniformly treated and backfilled and leveled. The Malanyu town government handed over this backfill project to the Riqiang Railway Selection Plant.

So this so-called backfill project with no construction plan, no specific completion indicators, no completion time limit, and no bid has been worked from 2016 to now, and 8 years have passed, not only has no backfill been done, but the pit has become bigger and bigger.

Reporter: "How long have you been knowing?" ”

Mayor of Ma Lanyu Town Government: "I can't say clearly, because we didn't find excavation during the inspection. ”

Reporter: "Without the act of excavation, how can the pit become bigger and deeper?" ”

Mayor of Malanyu Town Government: "Now visually speaking, the amount of change is not much. ”

Are these two big pits really not much changed as the person in charge said? The reporter checked satellite pictures from 2018 to the present, which clearly showed that in 2018, there were factory buildings and roads on the north side of the big pit, and a tailings reservoir in the south. In 2019, new pits appeared in the north and south of the plot, after which the two pits continued to expand. By 2020, the factory building in the north is gone, and the pit in the south is getting bigger. In 2021 and 2022, the two big pits are getting bigger and deeper, gradually getting closer, and by 2023, they will finally form what they are now.

Moreover, the Maranyu Town Comprehensive Law Enforcement Team conducts inspections of the project site twice a week. On the computer of the law enforcement team, the reporter saw the inspection records of the project since 2020. From these uninterrupted inspection records alone, it is clear that the dramatic changes in this plot are clear.

Mayor of Malanyu Town Government: "In the backfilling process, there was indeed suspicion of theft. ”

The comprehensive law enforcement station in Malanyu Town is located next to the Riqiang Railway Sorting Plant, and the town government is only two kilometers away. Five or six excavators in the pit are mining ore together, and it can be clearly heard in a radius of several kilometers. Nearby villagers are also constantly reflecting upward.

Villager: "We sued several times, and the village cadres always said that this was a support enterprise in the town, and when I said that supporting an enterprise would destroy the land?" ”

Over the years, although the local people have repeatedly reported the suspected illegal mining of the Nichiang Iron Selection Plant, the plant has never been filed. In August 2021 alone, the Malanyu Town Comprehensive Law Enforcement Team fined 8,4070 yuan on the grounds that the factory had built a weighing house without approval.

These two large pits are only more than 800 meters away from the first batch of key cultural relics protection units in the country, the World Heritage Qingdong Tomb. The villagers' arable land was destroyed, and some of them were not given money for the land.

The big pit of the Riqiang Iron Dressing Plant in Malanyu Town, Zunhua City, covers an area as big as eight or nine football fields and is as deep as a dozen floors, but such a huge pit, the law enforcement department that inspects twice a week turns a blind eye, allowing this enterprise to illegally mine for more than eight years, watching the illegal mining destroy the cultivated land and damage the ecology day by day. It is hoped that the relevant local departments will take responsibility, crack down harshly on illegal mining, never tolerate it, and investigate dereliction of duty to the end. (CCTV News Client)