It seems the dust has finally settled on the months-long controversy surrounding the Old Summer Palace, or Yuanmingyuan, park project to cover its lake beds with impermeable covers, presumably to conserve water.

It is reported that water began flowing into the lakes from Wednesday after the park administrators removed many covers from the lake beds as ordered by the authorities.

In March, the park administration decided to place plastic covers on the lake beds to prevent water from seeping into the ground, which they claim could save the park millions of yuan in water fees annually.

But critics said the ecosystem would suffer severe damage from the covers.

An environment expert first blew the whistle in March when he visited the park and saw the covers. He appealed to the authorities to stop this "ecologically damaging" practice immediately.

His appeal quickly caught fire in the media, where subsequent reports instantly made the issue a boiling controversy.

It also caught the attention of country's top environment watchdog, the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), which later convened a public meeting to elicit public opinion over the disputed project.

SEPA then ordered the park administration to submit an environment impact assessment report on the project, which was later conducted by Tsinghua University.

After receiving the assessment report in early July, SEPA ordered the park administration to remove some of the plastic covers it had already placed.

Now, the park authorities have almost completed the removal of the covers, allowing water to fill the lakes and ending a long-running dispute.

But much can be learnt from this half-year long controversy.

In the first place, the park administrators' failure to undertake the required environment impact assessment before proceeding with its plans, in violation of the country's environmental impact assessment law, is what triggered the mess and cost 30 million yuan (US$3.69 million) in public money.

Also, had the park administration's working been more transparent, public scrutiny would have happened earlier and such huge losses could have been avoided.

More worrying is the fact that had the environment expert not sounded the alarm when he did, the project would have gone ahead and resulted in the kind of environmental damage that is hard to assess in money terms alone.

Although the park administration failed to submit the required environment assessment report, it still got the go-ahead from relevant government departments to cover the lake beds.

Obviously, the lack of a mechanism by which environment impact assessment is valued highly and followed strictly in many government bodies when making decisions concerning matters of public interest, is also to blame for the Yuanmingyuan mess.

But there are still some reassuring developments from this whole episode.

Both the public and the media played an indispensable role in the Yuanmingyuan case, which shows a heightened awareness of environmental issues.

To a large extent it was the loud public debate that prompted the country's top environmental watchdog to act and finally put the brakes on the project.

(China Daily September 10, 2005)