Fire-breathing trash dragons
- Source: Global Times
- [01:42 January 27 2010]
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One of the two main trash dumps is about 300 meters from the plant, beside which migrants from other cities live, collect waste and sell them for profit. The other is right on the northwest corner of the Bishui Lanwan neighborhood. Photos: Bishui Lanwan residents
By Li Xiaoshu
Living next door to a stinking carcinogenic landfill, 95 of 98 residents of the "Crystal Water and Blue Bay" neighborhood favored replacing it with a brand new trash plant, according to a 2001 environmental survey.
The 120-million-yuan Jili Waste Incineration Power Plant on Yucun Nanlu in Qiaoxi district was listed among the "highlight projects of garbage disposal in North China" by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2003 and named a "star project" by the city of Shijiazhuang last year. With a daily capacity of 500 tons of garbage, the plant aimed to burn one-third of the Hebei Province capital city's waste.
So as the plant neared completion in 2009, it came as something of a surprise to some of the hundreds of thousands of residents in at least 24 neighboring communities and 13 colleges of higher education living within a 1.8-kilometer radius to discover they were about to become the honored hosts of the so-called "toxin of the century".
An unannounced class-one carcinogen was moving into the neighborhood to join the lower class of threats already thriving at the landfill. Colorless and tasteless, dioxin is 130 times more toxic than cyanide and 900 times more deadly than arsenic.
"They didn't mention 'dioxin' at all," said Yang Mantun, a villager in nearby Dongliangxiang.
"A regulation issued by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2008 said the minimum distance between incinerators and residential areas is 300 meters, but the new rule cannot apply retroactively to an assessment made back in 2001."
A Party member for 17 years, Yang refused to swallow it. Allied with Chen Lide, 46, a Bishui Lanwan apartment owner and four other residential representatives, he distributed fliers on April 15 advocating a campaign against the plant.
They gathered 9,700 signatures in 11 days.
A 200-page petition was sent to eight government departments in Hebei Province calling on city officials to reevaluate the plant's environmental impact and open public hearings in accordance with the legal environmental policymaking process.
Fireworks fly
When celebratory firecrackers exploded in front of the plant's gates on May 9, Yang, 57, rushed there hoping to negotiate with authorities. Security guards rebuffed him.
The fireworks soon escalated into a standoff between furious villagers and plant guards. More than 600 blocked the gates for two days. Shijiazhuang Deputy Mayor Wang Dahu came to the scene, but did not address protesters' entreaties. There were no reported casualties or police detentions.
The protest was not reported anywhere. Liu Gang, a reporter at the Shijiazhuang-based Hebei Youth Daily who withdrew a half-finished story on the incident, told the Global Times "it's complicated to explain why the editorial board self-censored the piece".
"We were not pressurized," he said.
Although the Shijiazhuang Daily had reported in April that the plant would begin trial operations before October 1 last year, today it remains closed. No official announcement has been made.
