sOCIETY
were also worried about the safety of ground water and no longer
dared to drink well water.Restoration
A villager told our reporter that the illegal dumping of acid had be-
come a business for many people in the village and as long as money
was paid, anyone could show the way for vehicles to dump liquid
waste. The business began to attract government attention in recent
years.
According to a report provided by the Dacheng County govern-
ment, the local government partnered with an environment company
to treat the polluted pit at the brick-making plant in March, 2014.
Meanwhile, OriginWater, another company specialising in the treat-
ment of water pollution, was contracted to bring the water quality at
the chemical fertiliser plant back up to standard.
The first round of treatment at the chemical fertiliser plant pool
started in April and lasted till the end of July 2014. The local govern-
ment paid a total of 150,000 yuan (US$21,800) as a deposit. Before
that, Wang Weihua, general manager of OriginWater made a field
trip to the pit. He recounted that the acidic water in the pit was dark
green with a pungent smell and that the main pollutants were acid,
heavy metals and phosphorus.
The company’s main treatment method was adding calcinated lime
to the pit. After the treatment, the county environment watchdog
carried out an inspection and issued an acceptance report. By the end
of August, 2014, however, the water quality had deteriorated. After
the second round of treatment and a further investment of 100,000
yuan (US$14,500) in November 2015, the water quality further de-
teriorated starting from September 2016. During media interviews,
OriginWater’s Wang said his company offered to provide a further
treatment plan but was turned down by the government.
Xu Junqiang told our reporter that the technician responsible for
the treatment was dismissed by the company when the treatment was
under way and the remaining work was finished by him and another
villager. “We worked as ordered by [OriginWater]. The company did
not treat pollution seriously and they just wanted to cheat the govern-
ment for money. We have been working for three years and during
the period it’s been pretty much one day on, two days off,” he said.
“[OriginWater] failed to thoroughly figure out where the pollu-
tion came from and what the state of water quality was at the time,”
Peng Yingdeng, an expert at the Beijing Municipal Research Institute
of Environmental Protection, told Beijing News. Peng added that an
overall examination is a precondition for the government to be able to
develop procedures for dealing with the pollution, as restoring water
and soil quality is both costly and time-consuming.
Sun Shaojin, deputy party chief of Dacheng County, said the brick-
making plant was the main culprit. He said the plant was the first en-
terprise in the village and the government provided farmland extract-
ing the material for making the bricks, leaving numerous pits. Since
the 1990s, companies that produced heavy pollution had sprang upA yard with a number of containers at Maliulang Village, Dacheng County,
Hebei Province, which villagers said was an acid plant, April 2017
Villagers of Nanzhaofu Village, Hebei Province, pooled money to build brick
factories. The pits that resulted are still there, April 20, 2017
Photo by cfpPhoto by cfp