sOCIETY
O
n April 18, 2017, photos of a cluster of red and yellow
pools of polluted water around a village in Dacheng
County, Hebei Province, went viral online after being re-
leased by an environmental protection NGO. The largest pit had a
surface area of more than 170,000 square metres of industrial waste,
equal to 24 standard football pitches.
On April 19, the Ministry of Environmental Protection made an
announcement to confirm the pollution and pledged to launch a
joint investigation. Three days later, Tian Weiyong, head of the Envi-
ronmental Inspection Bureau under the ministry, said the pools were
the result of the illegal discharge of industrial pollutants and the gov-
ernment will “crack down on the act at the national level and show no
tolerance to such incidents.”
Authorities later disclosed that the biggest dumping pit in Nanzha-
ofu Village, Dacheng County, around 130km south of Beijing, was
located at a former brick-making plant built in 1982 that ceased pro-
duction in 2016. Another pit in the village, covering 30,000 square
metres, had been home to a chemical fertiliser plant.Visiting the area, a ChinaReport reporter found that pits of various
sizes were scattered across the village like scars, occupying a third of
the arable land in the village. “The villagers are strongly opposed to
the brick-making plant because it destroyed our hometown,” a vil-
lager told our reporter on condition of anonymity.Pollution
On April 20, Li Ming (pseudonym), a technician from the He-
bei Prospecting Institute of Hydrology and Geology, was tasked with
undertaking an emergency survey of the dumping pool pollution at
Nanzhaofu Village. Together with seven colleagues, Li took two sonar
surveying ships and equipment to the village to calculate the volume
of polluted water.
Arriving at the scene, Li was taken off guard as the pollution was far
worse than he had expected. The pit was two kilometres away from a
main road, surrounded by strips of derelict farmland where not even
a blade of grass was growing. The bank of the pit was rust brown with
a pungent smell of industrial waste.Fetid Pools
An AvoidABle ASSAult
Total disregard for the environment by industry and government has led to a landscape
pockmarked with pools of pollution
By Wang Shan