The "June 5" Environmental Journalists' Association reports

Publication date 2 June 2005

China Environmental Journalists' Association recently received a report from people in You County in eastern Hunan province saying that the local environment here is being seriously damaged by hundreds of small coal mines. Therefore, with International Environmental Day coming up on June 5, the Journalists' Association in late May arranged for more than ten journalists from both central and regional media to go to You county for on-the-spot investigations. We found that of the 225 small mines in You County, not a single one had gone through environmental impact assessment procedures. Furthermore, there were no environmental control routines in place and local water and soil had been severely polluted - even to the extent that in some villages the farmland and watersources had been destroyed.

We arrived in the Jinbu river town of Luanshan in a thin drizzle and were spellbound by the lush, green landscape. But this picturesque scenery is rapidly being destroyed by the many coal mines upriver.

Going upstream, we found a landscape dotted with small mines. The rainwater washed through the mines and formed little streams that flowed into the Jiubu River - but they were streams of red, yellow, black and other abnormal colours and the stones on the bottom were coloured yellow by the substances in the water.

All over, we could see how the originally picturesque landscape was cut through by innumerable small black gangue piles, smaller trees and groves had been so covered in scrap material that only the treetops were visible with some trees even cut in half, and on their way to the lower currents the tumbling mountain streams were forced through these black mountains of gangue from the local mines.

Luanshan town is a major coal producing area of You County, and statistics from the You County environmental protection agency show that in the whole county, the mining in this town alone is responsible for the destruction of 13 mu of farmland and 144 mu of woodland (1 mu = 1/6 acre).

When we came to a mine called Xinglong, we saw that gangue and other left-overs from the mining was just being piled up on both banks of the local stream. The rain water washed through the gangue and flowed directly into the beautiful Jiubu River. The sulphur and the many other highly harmful substances in this water would severly pollute both water and soil further downstream.

The mine foreman, Mr. Yi Jianle, said that their only environmental measure was to add some lime (a type of mineral) in the precipitation tank to treat the waste water a little bit. But we couldn't even find the precipitation tank. The fumes from the coal production were sent unfiltered straight up in the air, and as if the waste piles outside were not enough, toxic waste water was being poured directly into the river. The mine boss admitted that this would have an unfortunate influence on the surrounding agricultural production.

Due to massive public protest, one year ago Xinglong mine invited the Hunan geological and environmental monitoring station to prepare an environmental impact report (this report has not been delivered to the provincial environmental protection bureau for approval), and this report had a lot of suggestions for improving Xinglong's environmental administration. But the mine boss said he had never really looked at it.

If indeed there are 225 mines like Xinglong in Yao County, what effect do they have on the local farmers' lives? During our investigations, we found that not only are the water and soil here contaminated, but great changes are also taking place in the geological structure!?!??! The people of the Longshangzu village neighboring Xinglong mine told us that originally the village had had three wells that had provided the people with water for generations, and that they had always held enought water for both drinking and irrigation. But after the mine opened a few years back, all the surface water had seeped away and although there is still a little water in the well on rainy days, there is not a drop to be found three days after a rainfall.

So now Longshangzu relies on a mountain stream a little ways away for their drinking water, but the hills are filled with coal mines and piles of coal cinder and there is no clean water to be found. The villagers said that after they had started drinking this water, a lot of people had gotten sick. Only the last three years, 11 people in this village of 118 had developed cancer.

Because the coal mining takes place underground, in addition to the disappearance of their surface water, the people of Longshangzu have also discovered cracks in their houses caused by the shifting ground. Many people have had to put up supporting poles to prevent their houses from collasing. Also the winding mountain road has caved in in several places, with holes tens of meters deep appearing here and there.

The destruction of their living environment has forced many people from nearby villages to leave their homes and move elsewhere. In Longshangzu , people said that many had moved away - earlier there were more than one hundred people in the village, and now only some 30 were left. (Comment: This is very strange - 2 paragraphs above it says that there are 118 people in the village... Pls advice.)

So how can these environmentally destructive mines be allowed to exist in such numbers, and why does the local government allow these substandard mines to keep working?

Director of You County Environmental Proteciton Agency, Mr Rong Jingwen, said that these mines had all obtained their coal mining licenses without having undergone any preparatory environmental impact assessments. In 2001 and 2002, You County reorganized its mining business in cooperation with provincial and national authorities and the number of mines fell from almost 800 to today's 225. Environmental authorities were part of the reorganization work, but all the other departments had unanimously approved these 225 mines' new work plans and therefore, although the environmental bureau's signature was missing, environmental protection was not an issue when these mines started operating again.

You County Vice Magistrate Mr. Liu Xiaolong admitted that the county coal mines all lack basic environmental facilities. But he also said that one must possess an enviromental assessment report approved by the provincial Environmental Protection Agency before one can obtain a mining license from provincial authorities. However, this only applies to new mines that applied after November 1998, when the "Regulations on Environmental Protection in Construction Projects", which stipulate that all planned construction projects must undergo environmental assessments, came into effect. He reckoned that among the older businesses started before November 1998, there might well be some that had not undergone such environmental assessments.

However, head of Hunan Environmental Protection Bureau's Development and Supervision Department, Mr. Yao Bin, said that mines opened after the reorganizing should be regarded as reconstruction projects under the new regulations(???) and that they therefore according to national regulations should have taken care of environmental assessment formalities. Muqian bufuhe huanbao yaoqiu de... ??!? Those who do not conform to the environmental standards should stop production and undergo environmental assessments.

The State Environmental Protection Agency's 1997 "Stipulations to improve environmental protection in small town coal mines" have an Article 10 that explicitly states that all reconstruction or expansion of village coal mines shall undergo environmental impact assessments before they can start handling other formalities.

Mr. Yao said that the situation in Chenzhou City of Hunan Province had long been much the same as in Yao County, but that the great majority of Chenzhou mines now had gone through with environmental assessments. The quality of environmental administration fundamentally depends on the attitudes of the local government.