Summary of the Environmental Petition Work of the EPA in 2005
In 2005, the EPA did not relax its efforts in addressing environmental petitions from the masses. It provided one-stop services for receiving, registering, and replying to petitions, enhancing the level of environmental petition work to serve the economy and maintain social stability. Below is a report on the environmental petition work conducted by the Bureau in 2005:
1. Strengthening the leadership of environmental petition work and improving the investigation and handling capacity of environmental petitions, which reflect the voices of the people. The quality of petition investigation and handling directly impacts the image of the environmental protection department among the public.
Firstly, our Bureau established the number one person in charge, specifically dealing with overall responsibility, under the leadership of the main leader, often grasping the mechanism to incorporate the work of handling letters and visits into the main agenda, studying and solving major problems encountered in the petition work, guiding the work of handling letters and visits; decomposing the petition work goal to the functional departments. The Bureau's Environmental Report Center is monitored by the detachment, so that tasks are assigned to the departments, individual responsibilities, and strict assessments, forming an upper and lower shared petition work situation;
Thirdly, it has formulated and improved systems and the leadership reception day system of the Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, and the detachment has also developed a series of petition handling systems, procedures, and strictly regulating my bureau’s handling of letters and visits from reception, registration, leadership marking, handling, inspection, gone through, feedback various aspects, stringent requirements, making the petition work further into the standardization track.
In concrete work, we adhere to the four efforts and four are not allowed: contradictions are not allowed to hand over, are not allowed to stand, are not allowed ineffective supervision, are not allowed to check and no fruit.
2. Strengthening the principle of service, changing the style of work in environmental petitions to change from passive to active, and ensuring advance prevention for rainy days.
We mainly do the following work: Firstly, take the initiative to report and carefully listen to their views, achieving the National People’s Congress, CPPCC leadership and support. Seriously handle a good NPC, CPPCC proposal by the representative of the motion, based on recommendations, but also invited the deputies to the NPC activity groups and part of the city CPPCC members to research and discussion on the city’s environmental protection work to improve our working methods and style.
Secondly, strictly implement construction project environmental approvals, strictly implementing the EIA system, and in the project approval process, reduce and simplify the approval procedures, implementing one-stop approval, projects that require higher-level approval, implementing the system took the lead in helping to build the unit coordination and approval formalities. Reducing environmental impact assessment charges, establishing the Center for Environmental Assessment, building the expert database of project approval, helping enterprises to explore advanced control technology and providing free technical services for enterprises. And measures to reduce sewage charges encourage enterprises of pollution control facilities.
This year, the Bureau strictly implemented the EIA Act, environmental impact assessment, and up to now, a total of 71 approved construction projects, including the implementation of report books, newspapers, and the report table 24, 13 Registration Form EIA implementation rate of 100%; 33 completed projects, the actual implementation of acceptance 33, the acceptance rate of 100%; should perform the strict control of new sources of pollution from the source to do the petition prevention work.
Thirdly, increasing the supervision and management of old sources of pollution, resolutely banning non-compliant industries. For three consecutive years since 2003, carry out special actions to rectify enterprises that illegally discharge pollutants to protect public health and the environment, sorting out industries in the city that do not meet national industrial policies such as steel, cement, and energy carriers. For high-energy-consuming submerged arc furnaces accounting for 60% of the city’s smoke dust pollution, increase governance, especially in ferroalloy and calcium carbide production enterprises. Among the 148 submerged arc furnaces in the city's 73 home appliance stone ferroalloy enterprises, 37 environmental control facilities or governance cannot operate normally, resulting in the shutdown of the submerged arc furnace; treatment facilities cannot meet discharge standards or cannot run normally for 76 submerged arc cut-off deadlines for rectification; 35 submerged arc discharges meeting standards allowed to continue production, and its environmental control facilities enhance on-site supervision, ensuring stable discharge realization.
Fourthly, at specific stages, take specific measures to achieve preventive-based preventive measures. Strong condition for dangerous sources of pollution in our city is gradually increased, conducting surveys on hazardous wastes, waste chemicals, and pollution problems of industrial enterprises within the city thoroughly, and filing work. Establishing a daily monitoring mechanism of the risk of pollution sources and developing Wuhai City Environmental Protection Agency to prevent and deal with mass incidents work plan, Interim Provisions. In July this year, the municipal government allocated $1.3 million for the Bureau to purchase more complete environmental emergency monitoring vehicles, equipped with air quality monitoring equipment, rapid water pollution monitor, rapid determination of radioactive sources, another vehicle generator, protective clothing, laboratory analysis, and in-car communications system, greatly improving the Bureau’s ability to cope with environmental pollution emergencies.
For the characteristics of polluting enterprises in the industrial park in the city, my bureau has collected response to environmental pollution emergency resident self-protection leaflets, ready to be issued to nearby residents of the industrial park, improving residents' awareness of dealing with environmental pollution emergencies and reducing accident hazards. To further strengthen the city's key source of environmental regulation, the Bureau completed the city's key source survey work in November and developed a focus on the source of the Wuhai Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau environmental supervision and management responsibility system liability and responsibility content, ensuring the city's key source management rules to follow. May reduce the risk of pollution source pollution caused by environmental petition cases.
Fifthly, strict law enforcement, environmental law fails to fulfill administrative penalty cases apply to court to enforce. In the implementation process, closely coordinate with the Court, joint office to be punished parties, judge, environmental protection, three open dialogue, adhering to the seriousness of law enforcement, but also doing reasoning, the cases dealt with by one case petition, avoiding petition subjects, received very good results.
Addressing the environmental hotspots and difficult problems the masses are concerned about, economic development on the one hand promotes social progress, on the other hand, brings a lot of unavoidable environmental issues. According to the relevant requirements of the four national ministries and autonomous regional government, the city should shut down coking enterprises with a total capacity of 200,000 tons, totaling 32. Considering worker placement and maintaining stability, the city adopted a two-step approach. During the closure of the first batch of coking enterprises, the coking business owners strongly opposed, disrupting the shutdown work and leading to petitions, blocking the national highway unexpected events. The Bureau timely fed back to higher authorities and cooperated with relevant departments to do the ideological work of the owners and employees, completing the closure on August 30th for 16 enterprises.
On November 2nd, 2005, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Monning environmental cleanup rectification teams from the Ministry of Supervision and SEPA held a meeting in the city, requiring the remaining 16 coking enterprises with less than 200,000 tons to be shut down within 72 hours, proposing media publication reports and efforts to stabilize the work requirements. Our Bureau followed the requirements to start emergency plans to handle unexpected incidents, timely coordinating police, court, procuratorate, armed police, fire departments, unified action, and through extensive publicity using the municipal government's Wuhai daily newspaper, radio, television, Internet and other media issuing notices on shutting down and banning less than 200,000 tons of coking enterprises, publishing reporting calls; timely reported to the municipal government during the shut down ban. The shut down ban work proceeded smoothly without group incidents or unexpected events, completing the tasks required by the inspection teams.