Company penalized for contaminating reservoir, officials sacked
Xinhua, January 20, 2015 Adjust font size:
A mining company has been fined for polluting a reservoir in China's southwestern city of Chongqing last year and its manager remanded in custody, the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) announced on Tuesday.
According to the MEP, Huangchangping Mining Co. registered in central China's Hubei Province had contaminated the Qianzhangyan Reservoir in Chongqing, causing severe cross-regional water pollution.
Huangchangping Mining illegally began a trial production of pyrites, and dumped its untreated waste water on land near the plant. The toxic waste water seeped into ground water that flowed to the Qianzhangyan Reservoir, which is three kilometers away.
On Aug. 13, 2014, water at the Qianzhangyan Reservoir -- which supplied 50,000 people across the counties of Wushan and Fengjie in Chongqing with drinking water -- was deemed unfit for human consumption, resulting in direct economic losses of 3.34 million yuan (537,521 U.S. dollars).
The Hubei provincial environmental protection authority fined the mining company one million yuan, and its manager, Cheng Jinyin, was arrested for environmental pollution.
In addition, two local environment officials, whose names were withheld, were sacked for lax supervision.
It took until Aug. 19 to reverse the effects of the contamination and the reservoir could not completely resume water supply until Sept. 26. Endi