Yesterday in Chengdu, the capital of southwest China’s Sichuan Province, the Southwest Environmental Protection Supervision Centre of the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) formally went into operation.

 

Its launch demonstrated the government's determination to reinforce regional environmental protection supervision, said SEPA deputy chief Zhang Lijun.

 

The center will monitor southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces and the Tibet Autonomous Region.

 

The area covers nearly 2.4 million square kilometers, accounting for about a quarter of the country's total land area. It’s home to 200 million people which is approximately one-sixth of the country's population.

 

Center Director Ma Ning said at the opening ceremony that the center had a difficult task ahead as the region had more state-level nature reserves and borders than the eastern, southern, northwestern and northeastern parts of the country.

 

Southwest China has 49 state-level nature reserves.

 

Within the region forty-four percent of the country's hydropower resources originate from the upper reaches of major waterways such as the Yangtze and Pearl rivers. It also has the country's major grouping of alpine lakes.

 

In addition the area has a concentration of metallurgical, chemical, energy and mining industries.

 

In July this year the government agreed to set up five environmental protection supervision centers in the eastern, southern, northwestern, southwestern and northeastern regions.

 

The southwest center is the second to begin operations following the opening of the northwest centre in Xi'an, capital of northwest Shaanxi Province, on October 25.

 

Nationwide the discharge of waste materials and environment-related paroxysmal incidents is high. Opening of the five centers was aimed at dealing with the problem, Zhang said.

 

The centers will supervise local government implementation of state policies and regulations on environmental protection, how they handle major cases of environmental pollution and their emergency measures to respond to environment-related major paroxysmal incidents, the deputy chief said.

 

Before its official launch, the southwest center had discovered an incident of dishonesty in a diesel oil leakage case in Luzhou in Sichuan. On November 6 the Luzhou Power Plant polluted the Yangtze River after a machine leaked diesel oil cutting off water supplies to the city.

 

Some of the oil was carried by the Yangtze into Sichuan's neighbor Chongqing.

 

On November 15, the plant reported that 0.38 tons of diesel oil had leaked into the Yangtze. However, thanks to the supervision of the southwest center, it was discovered that nearly 17 tons of diesel oil had leaked into the Yangtze and the plant had submitted a false report.

 

(China Daily December 6, 2006)