BEIJING, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- China's top environment authorityhas issued an updated management guideline to regulate itspollutant emission permit system, making sure every emission intothe air, water and soil is supervised, Thursday's China Dailyreported.
Based on the provisional document in December 2016 to promotethe permit system, the guideline was made public by the Ministry ofEnvironmental Protection, the newspaper said.
The updated guideline highlights the responsibilities ofcompanies including the need to conduct regular monitoring andrelease information. Violators face tough punishments.
If a company is caught discharging pollutants without a permit,it could be required to suspend production or shut down, and facesa fine of up to 1 million yuan (155,000 U.S. dollars), according tothe guideline.
Companies guilty of other violations including excessiveemissions and falsifying monitoring data will also face similarpenalties of closure and heavy fines.
The permit system has worked in regulating emissions in the pastyear, and will be more effective when it is expanded to cover allcompanies with the help of the updated guideline, the ministrysaid.
In China, 27 provinces have adopted the pollutant emissionpermit system since the 1980s, and granted permits to more than240,000 companies before the reform started in 2016.
But problems including a lack of unified standards have loweredthe performance, thus making the update necessary, Wang Jian,deputy head of the ministry's department in charge of air pollutioncontrol, was quoted by the newspaper as saying. Enditem