Inner Mongolia advances in environmental protection

A photo shows the scenery of the Greater Hinggan Mountains in Inner Mongolia autonmous region, Aug 1, 2018. [Photo/VCG]

A three-year plan for prevention and cleanup of soil pollution was formulated and issued last year. A detailed investigation of the pollution of agricultural land was accomplished as scheduled. An investigation of land use by key industries and corporations was also carried out based on information collected from 2,263 corporations.

The government strengthened linkage management of polluted areas, started to regulate industrial solid waste storage sites and made specific investigations of the pollution sources of the cadmium industry, establishing a list of enterprises in the heavy metal industries to effectively control soil environment risks.

The government has completed a strategic environmental assessment under the 13th five-year plan and reported on green transitional development of Erdos to manage and control pollution sources.

The implementation rate of the assessment of industrial parks at the autonomous region level and above increased to 77 percent. As a result of streamlined administration procedures and delegated powers, the time limit for approval of assessment was reduced from 60 days to 30 days. A total of 338 major projects of 438 proposed were officially approved last year.

Inner Mongolia also increased its efforts to draw a bottom line of ecological protection to strengthen the supervision of nature reserves. It managed to clean up 663 mining exploitation and construction projects, with 544 mining and investigation enterprises closed, 32 reformed and 31 suspended.

The government intensified efforts to enforce laws and carry out supervision. It organized inspections to investigate and tackle environmental violations.

A total of 3,912 administrative penalty cases were handled resulting in fines of 493 million yuan ($72.97 million). A regional inspection of radiation safety was organized, covering 147 organizations that use nuclear energy and 1,691 radioactive sources.

The director of the regional ecology and environment department said that Inner Mongolia will continue to fight the critical battle for pollution prevention and control.