Another round of a special campaign to tackle industrial sources of water pollution kicked off citywide Wednesday. Law enforcement teams will mainly be checking water pollution sources along 32 sections of polluted rivers in Longgang and Bao’an districts, according to the city’s environment supervision authority.
A meeting was convened Wednesday afternoon to assign tasks for inspecting water pollution sources. It has been emphasized that the special campaign will be carried out through cross law enforcement, meaning law enforcement teams from other districts will be carrying out the inspections.
Data released at the meeting showed that by the end of September, Shenzhen had filed 1,169 environmental pollution cases and levied penalties of around 141 million yuan (US$20.35 million) on polluters this year.
According to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the number of environment pollution cases handled by Shenzhen between January and August this year ranked fifth nationwide and the total amount of the fines levied took third place.
Shenzhen also worked with Dongguan and Huizhou on six cross law enforcement operations in the first eight months of this year, inspecting 189 sources of pollution and 18 farms. The six operations ordered 46 enterprises to improve their equipment and surroundings in order to protect the environment.
As for water pollution treatment, more than 20 operations were conducted between January and September across Shenzhen. The law enforcement officials issued fines totaling 8.5 million yuan against enterprises that had polluted rivers.
Reports on the water quality in Shenzhen’s five major rivers showed that the amount of pollutants found in the rivers had dropped since the city started the operations.