Taking the fight to the worst polluters

The Ministry of Environmental Protection's Regulation on Identifying and Treating the Falsification of Pollutant Emissions Data, which took effect on Jan 1, stipulates 27 practices in three major catagories regarded as fraudulent behavior: distorting data; falsifying records; and instigating data falsification.

Here are the details of three companies that fell foul of the regulations.

Zhejiang Longda Textile Co, Shaoxing city, Zhejiang province

On April 5, inspectors from the Shangyu district Environmental Protection Bureau discovered that the company had built a wall inside a pool containing treated wastewater, which separated the treated wastewater from the sample collection port of the auto-monitoring facility.

Instead, the sample port had been connected to a water cistern, which was in turn connected to a drinking-water pipe, diluting the treated wastewater and preventing readings from exceeding the limits for pollutant emissions.

The company was fined 100,000 yuan ($15,000) for distorting monitoring data, and ordered to rectify the error. An official responsible was held at a detention center for 15 days.

Hangzhou Rising Sun Environmental Instruments Co, in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province

On March 1, inspectors from the Hangzhou Environmental Monitoring Division discovered that records related to chemical oxygen demand - a prime pollution indicator - at a dyeing company were not consistent with those uploaded to the city's emissions-monitoring platform.

Employees of Hangzhou Rising Sun, which was responsible for operating and maintaining the dyeing plant's emissions-monitoring facilities, had modified the equipment to substitute lower values when COD readings exceeded 400 micrograms per liter, resulting in discrepancies between the records kept by the facilities at the dyeing company and those uploaded to the bureau.

The dyeing company was fined 56,550 yuan, and two employees of Hangzhou Rising Sun were held at a detention center for five days.

Changye Water Co, Longyan city, Fujian province

On March 1, the company employed to maintain auto-monitoring facilities at Changye Water Co discovered that the wastewater sample collection pipe had been connected to a water container instead of the pool of treated wastewater.

The city's environmental protection bureau found two Changye employees guilty of interfering with emissions monitoring, and they were held at a detention center for five days.

- Zheng Jinran