Authorities in Hunan have set a deadline for the province's 832 papermaking plants to clean up their operations.

Jiang Yimin, director of the Hunan environmental protection bureau, said yesterday that the firms will be forced to close or suspend production if they fail to meet environmental protection standards by the end of the year.

Jiang said the local government had already ordered 234 paper plants around Dongting Lake to suspend operations, because they had no water treatment or alkali recycling facilities.

The plants warned yesterday include chemical pulping factories with no alkali recycling facilities and production capacities of less than 10,000 tons; firms that have annual outputs of more than 10,000 tons but no system for pollutant source monitoring; and plants producing more than 50,000 tons annually but have no plans for extension, technology reform or pollution control.

(China Daily January 18, 2008)