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Poison in the mindset

By Hu Yongqi and Li Jing (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-08 09:55

Frustrated Fengxiang residents staged a protest outside the Dongling plant before breaking into the plant on Aug 17. Demonstrators in Hengjiang, near Wugang, were also involved in a standoff with officials and police on Aug 8. No one was arrested or injured in either incident.

Li Zhengrong, director of Wenping township, which administers Hengjiang, declined to talk about the standoff and would only say that protesters "need someone to talk for them and that should be deputies to all levels of people's congress".

However, Liu Zhongwu, owner of the Jinglian Manganese Smelting factory, has been a deputy to the people's congress in Wugang and nearby Shangyang since 2007, but reportedly went on the run on Aug 13 when city officials arrived to close his plant. He turned himself in to police on Aug 27.

"He should be stripped of his post with the people's congress. A deputy must take responsibility without fear, not turn and run," said Gu, who added that, despite Liu's actions, the powers of people's congresses should be strengthened. "Administrative departments are stronger than people's congresses and deputies, so there is no way they can fully supervise the governance of local authorities."

The Fengxiang government and the Dongling Group agreed in 2003 that more than 2,300 residents living within a radius of 1 km of the smelting plant should have been relocated by 2007. So far, only 100 families have been moved, leaving around 1,900 people exposed to high levels of pollution.

"We warned the government and urged them to complete the relocation but they said they did not have enough money," said the director of the lead smelters administrative office surnamed Mao.

When the lead poisoning cases were exposed, under-fire Fengxiang officials promised to complete the relocation of residents in Madaokou and Sunjianantou village within five years, and later brought the target forward to two years.

The authorities had intended to move the remaining families over 1 km to Yuanshang but the plan was delayed once it was discovered about 20 children there also had excessive levels of lead in their blood. Environmental safety experts were called in to check the village but Zhang Xiaowei in the Fengxiang publicity department insisted: "The relocation site will not be changed."

For those in Madaokou and Sunjianantou, moving will only solve part of the problem as many will still need to cultivate crops on land beside the Dongling plant.

In Wugang, officials have also struggled to juggle efforts in poverty reduction and environmental protection, said Deputy Mayor Lei Zhanglin. Blessed with mineral resources such as coal, manganese and iron the county's mining sector has been a top priority, he said.

Experts believe the real problems started when smelters began illegally using anode slag, an industrial waste that contains lead, to refine manganese.

Lei admitted the environmental protection had often taken a back seat to economic growth but promised it would not happen again, "even if it means financial regression".

But Wugang is not unique and Liao Ming, a senior research fellow with the China Society of Economic Reform, said many local governments are clinging to an outdated mindset. He added: "A veto system, in which leading governmental officials' performance is linked to energy saving and emissions control, was set up in 2007, but it is still being ignored."

In most areas, environmental protection bureaus are unlikely to block an industrial project once it has been approved because they rely on local governments for funding.

Li Zhengrong claimed the Jinglian smelter was registered with the Ministry of Commerce but the factory was later found to be illegal and should have been shut down.

Two employees at the Wugang environmental protection bureau are under investigation and its director Huang Wenbin has been under increasing pressure following the scandal. His department was accused of failing to deal with the plant's high levels of pollution but Huang denied he or his staff had covered for the smelting firm.

"We just don't have the funds or the technology to do the job properly," he told Beijing News. "We don't even have the right testing equipment. Most of our kit was bought in the 1980s and are older than some of the staff."

The number of qualified staff is also a problem, he said, adding that his office has "failed to recruit any college graduates who majored in environmental sciences" since 2001 and that around 80 percent of his employees do not have proper training.

The Implementation Plan on Controlling Heavy Metal Pollution was passed in principle by the MEP on Aug 28 and demands joint measures by all the relevant departments to avoid further pollution.

China has an annual lead production capacity of 4.2 million tons and aims to make 3.2 million tons this year, which represents 37 percent of the global total.

Jin Wei, an analyst with the Chinese Lead Association in Shanghai, said all small smelters that do not meet current or future emissions standards will be shut down.

"The lead smelting industry will have to be restructured. It is the only way to keep residents healthy," he added.

Excessive levels of lead in the body can harm the nervous and reproductive systems, cause high blood pressure and anemia, and, in extreme cases, can lead to convulsions resulting in a coma or even death.

Although it may not be obvious in the short term, the illness can severely affect a child's mental and physical development.

Yet when interviewed by China Daily, a local official in the Wugang publicity department surnamed Xia said the recent spate of lead poisonings is "no big deal" as the children had shown no real symptoms, and he did not understand why the media was so interested in the story.

"His comments reflect the shortage of basic pathological knowledge among officials and, more importantly, his blas attitude towards the incident," said Xia Xueluan, a sociology professor at Peking University. "His response to the accident is insulting to human life.

"When pollution accidents happen, the first thing local officials think about is how to avoid the blame, rather than how to find a solution. The officials are indifferent to people's lives."

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