Provinces to monitor lower level authorities, freeing cities, counties to focus on polluters

The central government launched a road map to guide a fundamental reform of environmental protection authorities' management structure to increase their efficiency and independence at the city and county levels.

Twelve provinces have started the pilot projects of the new management structure, and it will expand to cover the whole country by 2020, according to the plan released on Thursday. Currently, city and county environmental protection authorities are part of and are supervised by local governments.