Inspection teams demand more efforts to improve China's environment

Four environmental inspection teams have urged local governments to do more to improve the environment after they made public issues they came across during their inspections.

Seven environment inspection teams were dispatched at the end of last year.

Team No. seven conducted a month-long inspection in northwest China's Gansu province in December last year and made the results known to Gansu provincial government Thursday.

According to the team, illegal mining and unlicensed construction of hydropower plants were found in seven national-level nature reserves, including Qilian Mountains.

In southwest China's Chongqing municipality, 39 of the 54 sewage treatment plants had not been completed on schedule. Twenty-two districts and counties have no facilities to treat sludge from sewage treatment plant.

Inspection team No. five also uncovered problems with the rehabilitation of abandoned mining sites. There was an area of 110 square kilometers to be restored, but less than 5 percent had been reclaimed.

Shanghai aimed to improve its garbage handling capacity to 33,400 tonnes a day by 2015. Last year, however, the real capacity was only 24,000 tonnes per day, according to inspection team No. two.

Water quality was also the issue. Of the 259 monitoring sites in Shanghai, 88, or 34 percent, saw water level marked as "V," which means bad.

Air quality was the major problem in northwest China's Shaanxi Province. Its capital, Xi'an, is one of China's most polluted provincial capitals. Illegal mining and farming activities were found in 14 nature reserves of national or provincial level. Endi