A draft amendment to the Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law, which was deliberated by Chinese lawmakers on Sunday, significantly raises fines for enterprises failing to fulfill pollution control duties.

The draft was submitted for second review to the 31st session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), or China's top legislature.

It lifted the restriction on the maximum amount of fines for enterprises blamed for discharging pollutants surpassing the set standard.

It said fines for such businesses would vary from twice to five times the pollutant discharging fees they should pay according to the severity of the violations.

Enterprises who failed to rectify the situation within a fixed time period would be closed, according to the NPC's Law Committee.

The previous draft amendment, which was submitted to the top legislature for first review in August, stipulated the amount of pollutants discharged into water by a factory should not exceed the limit set by national or local regulations. Offenders would be fined 100,000 yuan (US$13,500) to 1 million yuan.

The NPC's Law Committee, in an explanation of the draft, said: "The amount of fines should be imposed according to the severity of violations, and too little money cannot effectively tackle the long-standing problem of 'low violation cost'."

Inexpensive fines against polluters have been open to debate in China as many said they couldn't effectively curb environmental violations.

Environmental officials said that compared with the economic benefits of illegally discharged pollutants, the current level of financial punishment was "a drop in the bucket" for most enterprises.

The draft said victims of water pollution incidents were entitled to get compensation from polluters. The compensation could be more "expensive" for polluters than the fines, the Law Committee said, noting that would further augment their "violation cost".

In such disputes, agents concerned could entrust environmental monitoring institutions to provide relevant data. Such institutions should accept such entrustment and provide authentic statistics, according to the draft.

The amendment also encouraged legal institutions to provide legal aid to victims in cases where compensation was sought.

(Xinhua News Agency December 24, 2007)