“The location was an easy option for the illegal dumping of acidic
waste and materials laced with heavy metals. The PH level of the wa-
ter inside was 2.1, which means the dump pit was strongly acidic,” Li
told ChinaReport.
According to the local authority, the acid waste was initially dis-
charged into the pit by two villagers from 2011 to 2012. In March
2013, they were arrested after tip-offs from locals, confirming that at
least 6.1 tons of acid had been dumped into the pit.
Xu Junqiang, a local villager, told our reporter that he was a worker
at the brick-making plant in 2010 and nobody came to discharge
industrial acid then. After 2012, however, it became an open secret
in the village that the site was being used for the illegal dumping of
acid. “Villagers sometimes encountered trucks heading to the brick-
making plant and the vehicle plates were registered in the province. It
cost roughly 10,000 yuan (US$1,450) to discharge 30 tons of indus-
trial waste into the pit,” he said.
According to market values, however, it costs roughly 3,000 yuan
(US$435) to treat just one ton of industrial waste water. It is not rare
in Hebei Province to illegally discharge waste water and official statis-
tics from China Judgements Online showed that from August 2013
to March 2017, 1,369 judgements related to pit dumping were ruled
nationwide, including 433 cases handled by courts in Hebei Prov-
ince, accounting for nearly a third of the total number.
“After the two villagers were arrested, the illegal discharge of chemi-
cal waste water remained rampant and we have been detaining of-
fenders regularly ever since,” Rong Li, chief environmental inspector
of the Hebei Environmental Protection Bureau, told ChinaReport.
He added that Hebei’s Public Security Bureau even hired private en-
vironmental inspectors to tighten management in the production,
transportation and treatment of dangerous waste water. What’s more,
local villagers organised themselves to protect the village from illegal
waste dumping.
The dumping pits have seriously affected the lives of local villag-
ers. Xu Junqiang said the brick-making plant used to discharge waste
water into the Baima River. Villagers irrigated crops with the river
water but after the river was polluted, crops soon perished. LocalsView of a pit of about 170,000 square metres of waste, Nanzhaofu Village, Langfang City, Hebei Province,
April 20, 2017
Photo by cfp