After more than 100,000 tons of sludge was buried, the masses complained 14 times and still ignored them
Severe lack of supervision of sludge disposal in Suining, Sichuan
On September 6, Suining City, Sichuan Province was criticized by the Central Environmental Protection Inspection Team for allowing enterprises to illegally dispose of sludge for a long time.
The report of the Central Environmental Protection Supervision Group held that: local inaction and chaos, and serious lack of supervision.
Since 2015, Suining Xinjingyuan Bio-Environmental Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xinjingyuan Environmental Protection Company") has been complained 14 times by the masses for illegally dumping landfill sludge. However, Chuanshan District of Suining City has not only ignored it, but also Once lied that the problems reported by the masses were not true.
As of the end of August this year, more than 80,000 tons of sludge dumped illegally in landfills had not yet been safely disposed of.
Recently, the reporter followed the Central Fifth Ecological Environmental Protection Supervision Team to Sichuan. The staff of the supervision team responsible for investigating the case told reporters that if the sludge is not properly disposed of, it is equivalent to taking dozens of steps before. Initiate new environmental risks.
And this case also opened the cover of the harmless reduction and reduction of sludge nationwide.
Enterprises were arrested for whispering and rushing in transit
The Central Environmental Protection Inspection Team discovered an abnormality during an investigation at a sewage treatment plant in Guang'an City, Sichuan Province.
According to reports, in the preliminary investigation stage, the staff found that the destination of a large amount of sludge from many sewage treatment plants in Guang'an City was unknown. The ledger transferred showed that the sludge was transported to the same destination-Xinjingyuan Environmental Protection Company. .
According to data, Xinjingyuan Environmental Protection Co., Ltd. was established in 2012. It uses solid organic waste such as domestic sludge, crop straw, livestock and poultry manure as raw materials, and uses aerobic fermentation-earthworm breeding-worm manure screening to produce organic fertilizer. Domestic sludge, the designed annual consumption of 50,000 tons of domestic sludge.
Will there be problems in the process of inter-city transfer?
Does this company have the ability to deal with it?
With these questions in mind, on June 8 this year, the inspectors came near the Xinjingyuan Environmental Protection Company in Laochi Town, Chuanshan District, Suining City. They happened to see that the excavator was digging in the soil. There was not only domestic sludge, but also Industrial sludge and some off-white solids.
According to investigations, since 2014, Xinjingyuan Environmental Protection Company has successively received 223,300 tons of sludge from 42 sewage treatment plants in Suining, Guang'an, Nanchong, Neijiang, Sichuan Province, and leased 687.9 acres of land under the name of "soil improvement". 105,100 tons of sludge are directly dumped and buried.
In March 2017, without the ability to dispose of industrial sludge, the company illegally accepted the landfill of 27,400 tons of industrial sludge from Guang'an Beikong Water Co., Ltd., and also illegally accepted the landfill of Suining City Cycco Company at the end of 2014. Natural gas desulphurization gypsum forms 510 tons of off-white solid mixture (a hazardous waste) underground.
The site of the excavator that the inspection team saw was a report from the sewage treatment plant previously investigated, and Xinjingyuan Environmental Protection Co., Ltd. was caught in a hurried transfer under a guilty conscience.
Sampling tests found that the copper and zinc content in the soil around the landfill sludge exceeded the standard, and the contaminated land area reached 193.9 mu, including 115.4 mu of basic farmland.
At present, the relevant person in charge of the Xinjingyuan Environmental Protection Company has been detained due to suspected environmental pollution crimes.
14 complaints in 6 years were ignored, and the rectification was once again "emergency medical treatment"
The heavy stench emitted by the untreated sludge and the flying insects incurred have long caused great dissatisfaction among the surrounding people.
The inspection team found that since 2015, the public complained about the company's landfill sludge 14 times.
Prior to this, the Secretary of the Party Committee of Laochi Town, Chuanshan District had also taken a live video and sent a WeChat message to the Director of the Ecological Environment Bureau of Chuanshan District, Suining City, requesting investigation and handling.
However, the relevant departments have ignored them, and the problem of laissez-faire has persisted for a long time.
The enterprise is confident, and the problem intensifies.
In November 2020, when the Sichuan Provincial Ecological Environmental Protection Supervision Team was stationed in Suining City, the masses again complained about this issue, but Chuanshan District resorted to fraud and replied that the masses reported that the problem was not true; Suining City was not strict and untrue, and the original situation was not verified carefully. Reporting the findings of the investigation led to the problem still not being resolved in a timely manner.
This way of working is extremely irresponsible in the eyes of the inspectors.
"The locality is still dereliction of duty. The company should not just believe what it says, and then simply reply to the masses." Looking at the survey transcript provided by the locality, the company claimed that mixing the sludge with the soil is equivalent to improving the soil. "Just check and enter the site. The difference between the amount of sludge and the amount of compound fertilizer produced can easily be seen. Why hasn't it been noticed for so many years?"
To make matters worse, after the issue was pointed out, Suining City and Chuanshan District still did not pay enough attention, and relevant functional departments bucked each other.
Chuanshan District “has been rushed to the hospital”. The third-party sludge disposal unit determined by the bidding did not have the actual disposal capacity, and Suining City did not find out and correct it in time. This led to the failure of the third-party sludge disposal unit to perform the legal procedures for the transfer of solid waste across provinces. With the consent of the Sichuan Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment, 12 vehicles of about 360 tons of sludge were transported to Chongqing for disposal on July 14, 2021. The supervisory authority of the receiving place found it in time and returned it, causing negative impacts and secondary environmental risks.
Every locality should take warning
"We may have just lifted the lid on this phenomenon, not only in Suining, Sichuan, but the whole country is facing such problems, so we should take a warning." The inspector said.
In fact, as early as the second round of the third batch of central ecological and environmental protection inspectors’ feedback in July this year, they pointed out the lack of sludge disposal in various regions: Kaifeng City, Henan Province has no formal sludge disposal facilities so far, and Lankao County annually There are 6,600 tons of sludge piles in the plant; Liaoning’s "13th Five-Year Plan" plans to build 28 harmless sludge disposal projects, and only one has started construction.
Going back to Shanghai and Tianjin in previous years, the problems of serious shortage of sludge innocuous treatment capacity and outstanding illegal storage problems in the two places have also been frequently mentioned by the central ecological and environmental protection inspectors.
With the increase in population and the advancement of urbanization, a large number of urban pipeline networks and urban and rural sewage treatment plants have been built, and the amount of sludge produced has also increased. However, the previous attention to sludge disposal and management was not high.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, there were 4140 sewage treatment plants in my country in 2019, with a processing capacity of close to 200 million m3/d, ranking first in the world in terms of scale.
However, sewage treatment facilities still have problems such as uneven regional distribution, hidden dangers of secondary pollution in some sludge disposal, and emphasis on construction and over management.
To this end, the "13th Five-Year Plan" proposes to realize the transformation of urban sewage treatment facilities from "scale growth" to "quality and efficiency improvement", from "heavy water and light mud" to "mud and water".
"There is a big gap in sludge disposal, and there are still debts." The person in charge of the inspection team said that in the first round of central ecological and environmental protection inspections, the focus was on the construction of sewage treatment plants. Now the old problems are basically solved and the sludge is harmless. Chemical disposal has become a new common problem faced by all regions.
The heavy metals and harmful components in the sludge directly enter the water body or the soil, which will bring new concentrated environmental pollution, which is costly.
"It's easy to bury it, but the subsequent soil remediation costs are very high."
Among the several routes of sludge disposal in the past, the landfill for landfill treatment has gradually closed, and the production of the brick and tile factory or cement factory for incineration treatment is also unstable.
In addition, some brick factories and cement factories were affected by the epidemic and did not start construction for several months, resulting in nowhere for the sludge to go.
Some companies use sludge to raise earthworms and reproduce compound fertilizer, which accounts for 54.4% in Sichuan.
However, in the opinion of the inspectors, this method of supervision has weak links. Enterprises are mixed together, and it is very likely that the sludge will enter the soil without going through strict technical procedures.
On June 1 this year, the "Organic Fertilizer" standard issued by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs was officially implemented, prohibiting the fermentation of sludge to make agricultural organic fertilizer.
The water content of sludge exceeds 80%. If it can be dried in the sewage treatment plant to reduce the water content, sludge reduction can also be achieved.
However, the reporter learned that the sewage treatment fee is fixed in advance, and the contracts signed by the government and the sewage treatment plant are mostly 25 or 30 years. The government does not pay, and the policy does not require it. Naturally, companies are unwilling to increase sludge treatment and disposal. The expensive construction cost and operating cost.
"A long-term mechanism for sludge disposal has not yet been formed." The inspectors said that the future whereabouts of domestic sludge needs to be paid close attention to by the party committees and governments at all levels, and the harmless disposal of sludge should be put on the agenda as an item. To solve the people's livelihood project, we must come up with practical solutions.
In the view of the inspection team, the local government must not only solve the problem of "I must do it if I want to do it," but also the endogenous motivation of "I want to do it myself."
Our newspaper, Chengdu, September 6th
China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily reporter Zhang Yi Source: China Youth Daily