China News Service, Beijing, May 17 (Reporter Ruan Yulin) The Central Ecological Environmental Protection Supervision Team inspected in Yuxi City, Yunnan Province, and discovered that Tonghai County, Yuxi City, was engaged in construction projects in order to meet the water quality assessment requirements in the pollution control work of Qilu Lake. Falsified methods are used to interfere with the sampling environment of state-controlled water quality monitoring points, resulting in the illusion of water quality improvement.
Qilu Lake is the “mother lake” of Tonghai County and one of the nine plateau lakes in Yunnan. Due to serious agricultural non-point source pollution in the basin, the water quality of Qilu Lake has long been inferior to Category V.
The first round of central ecological and environmental protection inspectors in 2016 and the "Looking Back" in 2018 both seriously pointed out this issue.
The Yunnan Provincial Inspectorate's rectification plan and the water pollution prevention and control target responsibility letter clearly stated that it is necessary to promote the adjustment of the planting structure and the transformation of agricultural production methods, and the water quality of Qilu Lake will reach Class V by 2020.
However, since 2018, the deterioration of Qilu Lake's water quality is still relatively obvious.
During the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" period, Tonghai County of Yuxi City invested 730 million yuan (RMB, the same below) to build a sewage interception project around Qilu Lake to collect the aquaculture wastewater and corporate drainage that enter the lake.
Inspectors discovered that there are connected gates between these sewage interception projects around the lake and the rivers and ditches into the lake. The intercepted sewage is discharged into Qilu Lake through the gates in the rainy season, and the sewage interception works around the lake become a decoration.
Seeing that the water quality is deteriorating in 2020 and it is difficult to complete the water quality assessment target, the Tonghai County Party Committee and the county government invested 485 million yuan between March and December 2020 to build 6 water quality improvement stations by the Qilu Lake. The processing capacity is 331,000 cubic meters.
Inspectors discovered that these water quality improvement stations mainly take water from Qilu Lake and discharge it into Qilu Lake after being purified by ozone, instead of treating the sewage intercepted by the sewage interception project around the lake.
This simple treatment of the water quality of local lakes fails to achieve the goal of effective pollution control for the 145 million Qilu Lake.
An in-depth investigation found that Yuxi City invested 26.5 million yuan in the construction of the Tonghai branch pipe Majiawan water replenishment port project to divert water from Dalongtan into the lake; Tonghai County invested 20.93 million yuan to build 5 water inlets with a length of 1.5 km to 4.5 km. The lake extends the drainage pipeline to transport ecological water supply and part of the water quality improvement station effluent to the area near the water quality monitoring point, dilute the concentration of water pollutants, and artificially interfere with the water quality monitoring sampling environment.
Yuxi City also invested 23 million yuan to use PVC double-sided coating tarpaulin to build two circles of U-shaped flexible enclosures around the national monitoring point in the center of the lake, with a length of about 8 kilometers, thereby forming a relative area around the monitoring point. Closed waters to prevent good water from flowing out and poor water from flowing in.
The inspection team pointed out that Yuxi City’s ineffective supervision and guidance and the distortion of Tonghai County’s outlook on political performance have been involved in construction projects in order to meet water quality assessment requirements.
The inspection team will further investigate and verify the situation.
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