Garbage plant's operations blocked following failed talks

The pollution saga troubling Chongqing municipality since April is turning ugly as more than 1,200 tons of hazardous, foul-smelling waste pile up in the affected region.

Villagers in Bishan county have stopped the operation of the Bishan Hazardous Waste Disposal Center since April and are calling for proper management of the plant to avoid pollution.

Villager Wen Guangming told local media that the plant polluted the air and water and they have to block the door of the plant to prevent further pollution after talks with the local government failed.

But for Dai Gui, head of Chuanglu Environment Protection Company, which is in charge of all the disposal plants in Chongqing, money is the key word instead of pollution.

"What matters in this case are the subsidies that villagers will get, not the pollution. Every family will get at least 200,000 yuan ($29,300) for houses with each family member getting 30,000 to 50,000 yuan as subsidies for daily life," Dai told China Daily yesterday.

The villagers' resettlement will cost at least half a billion yuan and profits of the plant are no more than 200 million yuan, meaning the plant will have to shut down because neither the government nor the company can raise the money, he said.

According to current regulations on hazardous waste disposal, no one should live within 800 m of a waste disposal plant. Those living on more than 200 hectares of land near the plant will be resettled.

"When the county government planned to build the waste disposal plant here, the authorities did not take the resettlement issue into consideration and it led to the current situation," Dai said.

In June and July, officials from the municipal government said that the government would help move some of the villagers out of the area and they promised to solve the pollution problem, the Wuhan Evening News reported yesterday.

Officials from the county government and the municipal bureau of environment protection could not be contacted yesterday.

Dai said they have communicated with the municipal bureau of environmental protection and the local government from time to time but are still waiting for their decision.

Now the villagers are preventing the company from sending the hazardous trash out of the plant and have cut its water supply, he said.

The municipal plan was to have seen the plant start operations in May this year with an annual capacity of 30,000 tons, he said.

Experts estimated that every year more than 700,000 tons of hazardous wastes are produced in Chongqing, the Wuhan Evening News reported. So far, all the hazardous wastes are sent to Changshou Hazardous Wastes Disposal Center.

Hazardous waste mainly refers to industrial solid waste that poses substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment.

The commonly used treatments for hazardous wastes in China are cement-based solidification and incineration. The first is to solidify the heavy metal to avoid the metal infiltrating underground water. The latter can burn the flammable wastes at a high temperature and be used as an energy source.

(China Daily 12/31/2009 page4)