Spending huge amounts of money to build facilities that interfere with the sampling environment, implement inspections, rectify, and adjust the door height, and fewer actions
Central Ecological and Environmental Protection Inspectors approve some places for fraud
● Putting the sewage into the lake without treating it, and simply treating the water quality of some parts of the lake, does not achieve the purpose of effective pollution control for the 145 million Qilu Lake.
● Except for the fines in place, Taigu District of Jinzhong City has not carried out any in-depth investigations into the fraudulent behavior of enterprise data. The seal of the online monitoring station has been torn off, and the coke ovens that are planned to be shut down are still in the state of coal-filled ovens.
● Compared with corporate violations, the impact of local government inaction or even fraud is worse, and it deserves more attention
□ Our reporter Yan Jianrong
Performing projects, making superficial articles, and even falsifying... In April this year, after the second round of the third batch of central ecological and environmental protection inspectors stationed in 8 provinces (regions) including Shanxi, some places pretended to control pollution, despite the "smart" methods, but they also have one after another. Reappeared.
On May 17, the inspection team notified that in April 2021, the eighth central ecological and environmental protection inspection team was sunk in Yuxi City, Yunnan Province. The inspector found that Tonghai County had invested heavily in facilities to dilute the concentration of pollutants in the water body and artificially interfere with the water quality monitoring and sampling environment.
At the same time, when the Central First Ecological and Environmental Protection Supervisory Group sank to inspectors in Jinzhong City, Shanxi Province, it was discovered that Shanxi Taigu Hengda Coal Gasification Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Hengda Company), a key enterprise in Taigu District, Jinzhong City, was actually in the inspectors. When entering the enterprise, the coke oven flue gas valve "hands and feet".
The Taigu District Government promised to shut down the enterprise, but it was fined.
The inspection team pointed out that Tonghai County has “distorted its view on political performance. In order to meet the requirements of water quality assessment, it has carried out pretentious projects, made superficial articles, falsified and interfered with water quality monitoring.” The Taigu District Committee and District Government of Jinzhong City “implemented the inspection and rectification work. , The implementation of actions is small, and the rectification attitude is not resolute."
Invest huge sums of money to trap good water
Create the illusion of water quality improvement
Located in Tonghai County, Yuxi City, Yunnan Province, Qilu Lake with a drainage area of 354 square kilometers is one of the nine plateau lakes in Yunnan Province and the "Mother Lake" of Tonghai County.
Due to the high vegetable cultivation area in the basin and serious agricultural non-point source pollution, the water quality of Qilu Lake has been inferior to Grade V for a long time.
As early as the first round of central ecological and environmental protection inspectors in 2016 and the 2018 inspectors "look back", the inspection team pointed out that the treatment of pollution in Qilu Lake should start with the treatment of agricultural non-point source pollution.
The inspection and rectification plan and the water pollution prevention and control target responsibility letter formulated by Yunnan Province also clearly stated that it is necessary to promote the adjustment of planting structure and the transformation of agricultural production methods, and the water quality of Qilu Lake will reach Class V by 2020.
Seeing that the water quality of Qilu Lake is deteriorating in 2020 and it is difficult to complete the water quality assessment target, the Tonghai County Party Committee and the county government decided to study the water quality improvement project instead of trying to solve the problem.
In April of this year, when the inspection team went to inspect Yuxi City, it was discovered that in order to complete the rectification goal of "Qilu Lake's water quality reaches Class V by 2020", Yuxi City and Tonghai County have spent huge sums of money to build facilities at monitoring points and enclose them. "Good water", artificially promotes water quality up to standard.
According to the inspection team, from March to December 2020, Tonghai County invested 485 million yuan, and without going through the environmental review and approval procedures, six water quality improvement stations were successively built along the Qilu Lake.
"These water quality improvement stations mainly take water from Qilu Lake, and then discharge it into Qilu Lake after being purified by ozone, instead of treating the sewage intercepted by the sewage interception project around the lake." The inspection team’s on-site sampling and monitoring results showed that In the sewage interception ditch across the way from the No. 3 Water Quality Improvement Station, the COD (chemical oxygen demand) concentration of sewage is as high as 79 mg/L, which is nearly 30 mg/L higher than the average COD concentration of Qilu Lake.
The inspection team pointed out that this method of putting the sewage into the lake without treating it, and only simply treating the water quality of some parts of the lake, does not achieve the purpose of effective pollution control for the 145 million Qilu Lake with a storage capacity.
Not only that, in the name of ecological water replenishment, Yuxi City invested 26.5 million yuan to build the Tonghai branch pipe Majiawan water replenishment project, diverting water from Dalongtan into the lake; Tonghai County invested 20.93 million yuan in the name of enhancing water power and increasing water circulation to build 5 Extending drainage pipelines from 1.5 km to 4.5 km long into the lake transport ecological water replenishment and part of the water quality improvement station water 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.
Among them, the ecological water supply project, the No. 1 water quality improvement station, and the No. 4 water quality improvement station's extension drainage pipe outlets into the lake are all located about 700 meters around the national control water quality monitoring point in the center of the lake.
The inspection team revealed that Yuxi City has also invested 23 million yuan to use PVC double-sided coated tarpaulins to build two U-shaped flexible enclosures around the national control monitoring point in the center of the lake. The total length is about 8 kilometers and the depth is about 4 to 4 kilometers. 8 meters, the inner circle is the nearest 222 meters to the monitoring point, and the outer circle is the nearest 697 meters to the monitoring point, thus forming a relatively closed water area around the monitoring point to achieve the purpose of "preventing good water from flowing out and poor water from flowing in".
The inspection team pointed out that after the implementation of these man-made interference measures, in the fourth quarter of 2020, the average COD concentration at the national-controlled water quality monitoring point in the heart of Qilu Lake dropped from 52 mg/liter in the third quarter to 40.3 mg/liter, causing Qilu. The illusion of lake water quality improvement.
Tackling sewage facilities
Cover up the facts of illegal and secret row
In Jinzhong City, Hengda is a well-known company, but the company has repeatedly performed illegal tricks.
To make matters worse, when the inspectors entered Hengda in April this year, the company actually "handled" the sewage facilities.
According to the introduction of the inspection team, when the inspector was sunk in Jinzhong City, the inspector specially went to Hengda Company for on-site inspection.
“When the inspectors entered the company, the company privately opened the 4.3-meter coke oven flue gas bypass manual valve, and closed the flue gas that normally leads to the treatment facility. The bypass flue gas is being used to sneak out the flue gas.” The inspection team revealed, After 20 minutes, when the inspector returned to the original place, the previously opened bypass valve had been quietly closed, and the originally closed electronic valve of the flue gas channel had returned to normal.
Subsequently, the amount of bypass flue gas decreased significantly, and the temperature in the bypass flue gradually dropped.
The inspection team confirmed through investigation that Hengda has a long history of "hands and feet" on sewage facilities.
For a long time, Hengda Company has only discharged about half of the coke oven flue gas through the normal flue, while the other half of the flue gas is discharged from the bypass flue gas by privately opening the coke oven bypass baffle without any treatment. Channel emissions, use the illusion of normal production to cover up the fact that illegal emissions are illegally discharged.
Inspectors obtained online data from the monitoring platform of the local ecological environment department and found that in the first quarter of this year, the temperature of the bypass flue of Hengda Company exceeded 200 degrees Celsius for a long time. The average amount of flue gas is as high as more than 200,000 cubic meters.
The inspectors also found that Hengda had serious leakage.
Because the bypass baffle is usually not tightly closed, even if the bypass valves are all closed, about 10% of the coke oven flue gas is still untreated and leaked through the bypass flue.
While Hengda was “hands and feet” on the sewage facilities, the newly-built desulfurization and denitrification facilities did not play its due role.
The inspection team revealed that, due to the use of ammonia desulfurization, Hengda Company should have produced about 1,000 tons of desulfurization by-product ammonium sulfate a year.
However, the on-site inspector found that the ammonium sulfate centrifugal dehydration equipment at the core of the desulfurization and denitration facility was covered with a thick layer of lime soil, which had not been used normally for a long time.
A review of the company’s ammonium sulfate production records found that when the coke output reached 479,000 tons in 2020, Hengda produced only about 10 tons of ammonium sulfate, which was less than one percent of the amount produced during normal operations.
At the same time, the company stores tens of thousands of tons of coke produced in the open air without any dust prevention measures. The site environment is dirty and messy, and the storage yard and transportation vehicles have serious dust pollution.
Hengda will hand over the daily operation and maintenance of the company's flue gas online monitoring facilities to the third party Shanxi Century Tianyuan Environmental Technology Co., Ltd. to be responsible.
The inspection team found that the operation and maintenance company used online monitoring data fraud and other methods to conceal the illegal facts of Hengda's illegal discharge and serious excessive discharge.
“The flue gas temperature is an important indicator for judging whether the bypass flue gas is discharged. However, the personnel of the operation and maintenance company have always reported the failure of the flue gas temperature monitoring equipment during the daily operation and maintenance, and the flue gas sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide concentrations have been lower than 10 The abnormal situation of milligrams/cubic meter is ignored, pretending to be deaf.” The inspection team manually monitored the actual sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emission concentrations of Hengda's flue gas at 143 mg/cubic meter and 86 mg/cubic meter, respectively. The concentration of sulfur dioxide exceeds 3.8 times of the Pollutant Emission Standards for the Coking Chemical Industry. At the same time, online monitoring data shows that the concentrations of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides are 0.5 mg/m3 and 4.05 mg/m3, respectively. The data is seriously distorted and fraudulent behavior exists. .
Inadequate supervision by local government
Facing rectification and perfunctory
The inspection and rectification plan and the water pollution prevention and control target responsibility letter formulated by Yunnan Province clearly stated that it is necessary to promote the adjustment of the Qilu Lake planting structure and the transformation of agricultural production methods.
However, the inspection team found that in actual work, the Tonghai County Party Committee and the County Government did not take effective measures to promote the resolution of these problems. With no fundamental changes in production methods and no effective adjustment of the planting structure, the vegetable planting area in Tonghai County did not decrease but increased. , Increasing from 345,000 mu in 2018 to 353,000 mu in 2020.
On the one hand, Tonghai County did not work hard on the root cause, on the other hand, it invested heavily in projects, but these projects did not really improve the water quality of Qilu Lake.
According to the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan for Water Environmental Protection and Governance in Qilu Lake Basin (2016-2020)", during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, Tonghai County invested 730 million yuan to build a sewage interception project around Qilu Lake. To collect farmland tail water into the lake, aquaculture wastewater, enterprise drainage, and initial rainwater in the surface runoff area.
The inspection team found that there were connecting gates between these sewage interception projects around the lake and the rivers and ditches into the lake. Since there was no simultaneous construction of sewage treatment facilities, the intercepted sewage was discharged into Qilu Lake through the gates in the rainy season. The lake sewage interception project has actually become a decoration for "hiding dirt and holding dirt" in the dry season and "zero storage and integration" in the rainy season.
The inspection team spot-checked on site and found that the water quality in 9 sewage collection points, including Wanjiadagou Regulation, Storage and Sedimentation Pond, was turbid, and some were even yellow-green. The sampling and monitoring results showed that the water quality was inferior to Class V.
The inspection team found out that during the rain from April 5 to 6, 2021, Yangjiaying, Yuejiaying, Yianshao, Haidong No. 2, Gong Yang and other sewage intercepting ditch opened gates connected to the main river into the lake. , Drain a large amount of sewage directly into Qilu Lake.
In addition, the sewage interception project around the lake, which should be fully completed by the end of December 2020, has not yet been fully completed, and the tail water from farmland in some areas is still directly drained into Qilu Lake.
In response to the Qilu Lake pollution problem, the inspection team approved the ineffective supervision and guidance of Yuxi City, and promoted the implementation of the central ecological and environmental protection inspections and rectifications. Tonghai County did not take any responsibility and inaction in the adjustment of agricultural planting structure, optimization of planting methods, and pollution control.
When disclosing the environmental violations of Hengda Company, the inspection team revealed such a detail: After the inspectors entered Hengda Company and discovered that the company’s monitoring facilities were fraudulent, on April 10, the Taigu District Government submitted a report on the handling of the problem to the inspection team. Mentioned, “impose high-limit penalties on enterprises, order them to shut down the 4.3-meter coke oven’s 300,000-ton capacity from April 10, and limit the remaining 300,000-ton capacity to 50% until the end of the year, the district public security branch and the district ecology The Environmental Sub-bureau jointly launched the investigation procedure" and sealed the company's online monitoring station and bypass baffle valve wells.
However, a few days later, when the inspectors made another secret investigation and return visit, they found that, except for the fines in place, Taigu District did not carry out any in-depth investigations into the fraudulent behavior of corporate data, and the seals of the online monitoring stations had been torn off. The furnace is still in the state of coal-filled simmering furnace.
It was not until May 1 that the Taigu District Government shut down the 300,000-ton production line of Hengda’s 4.3-meter coke oven in accordance with the law, and imposed production restrictions on the remaining 300,000-ton production line. The relevant departments carried out investigations in accordance with the law.
While the inspection team approves Hengda Company and the operation and maintenance company Shanxi Century Tianyuan Environmental Technology Co., Ltd. for their weak awareness of ecological and environmental protection, they ignore environmental protection laws and regulations, and wantonly discharge pollution to the environment, and at the same time "cover" the illegal discharge of enterprises. Publicly criticized Taigu District of Jinzhong City for ineffective daily supervision of enterprises, inadequate supervision and inspection, and not resolute in implementing inspections and rectification.
Undoubtedly, compared with corporate violations, the impact of local government inaction or even fraud is worse and deserves more attention.