The environmental protection authorities in Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei Province recently strengthened coordinated law enforcement efforts in air pollution control.
The regional authorities will work together to implement the action plan on combating air pollution, recently issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the surrounding areas in the fall and the coming winter season.
The authorities will focus on polluting enterprises, key industrial enterprises, as well as coal burning and non-point source pollution. The environmental protection authorities in the region will make unremitting inspection and carry out joint law enforcement with public security departments to severely punish violations of environmental laws.
To deal with polluting enterprises, the law enforcement departments will investigate and severely punish those failing to go through approval procedures for environmental protection. The departments will tackle factories without equipment for pollution treatment and those whose equipment is in abnormal condition, and that emit dust randomly and generate excessive emissions of pollutants.
The departments will also launch crackdown against volatile organic compound emitters in violations of environmental laws in the sectors of petrochemical and chemical engineering, automobile manufacturing, machinery and furniture manufacturing, packaging, and printing.
In strengthening the regulation of non-point source pollution, the departments will urge the local governments to prohibit straw burning. Other non-point source pollutants including construction dust, pollutants resulted from open-air burning and open-air barbecue will be closely monitored, and polluters will be severely punished.