The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) and the Ministry of Supervision will oversee probes into four major environmental pollution cases this year, the two agencies announced yesterday in Beijing.

The four cases include the pollution case by the Hailin Xueyuan Distillery, which recently released pollutants into the Mudan River in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

The case involves an unknown substance found blocking the water inlet of a major water plant of Mudan River a week ago, causing some panic among the local residents with the fear of a possible water stoppage.

Experts confirmed the fungus as an aquatic macro-organism, which is formed under an anoxic environment, but it is not harmful to people, said Wang Shuyin, the local government's spokesman.

Hailin Xueyuan, which dumped lees into the river and is being blamed for triggering the wild growth of the fungus, had been ordered to suspend operations together with two other companies one beer brewery and a packing house.

SEPA cited the wine plant for launching the alcohol production without the required equipment of sewage treatment.

The distillery was ordered to suspend its operation by the local environmental protection bureau at the end of last year.

But since the local government had neither approved the order nor released it, the factory continued to release its waste until last week's accident.

Other environmental pollution cases involve:

The district and county authorities under the jurisdiction of Xinzhou, north China's Shanxi Province, which enact local policies and regulations that violate China's environmental laws and regulations;

Manganese pollution in the border area between the provinces of Guizhou and Hunan and Chongqing Municipality;

The environmental damage caused by the Baimei Paper Enterprise in Yuzhong County in northwest China's Gansu Province.

SEPA also released a follow-up yesterday, after ordering reckless plants that operated against the rules to correct their wrongdoings and improve their environmental protection capability.

Last May, SEPA ordered nine plants involved in industries of paper making and smelting to improve their equipment of waste treatment. Now the equipment at all nine plants meet the standards, SEPA said.

And in September last year, SEPA released the names of 14 sewage treatment plants that had malfunctions or suspensions of operation. Now five are working again with full loads.

Four are working at half their designed capacities, and the remaining five are still recovering their operations.

(China Daily February 28, 2006)