How to control enterprise pollution discharge

Sunlight, air and water are the dependence of human survival. Any destruction and pollution may create environmental nightmares.

following the smog weather, water pollution caused by enterprise sewage has also attracted everyone's attention. From late February to March, 212, the Ministry of Environmental Protection organized the environmental protection departments (bureaus) of six provinces (cities) such as Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei to investigate the industrial enterprises in the North China Plain, and found that 55 enterprises used seepage wells, pits or ditches and pits without anti-seepage measures to discharge, transport or store sewage.

According to the p>《21 Bulletin on Environmental Status of China, the quality of groundwater in China is not optimistic, with 1,759 monitoring points with excellent-good-good water quality, accounting for 42.8% of all monitoring points, and 2,351 monitoring points with poor-very poor water quality, accounting for 57.2% of all monitoring points. This situation is still getting worse. According to the survey conducted by the Ministry of Land and Resources in recent years, the groundwater quality in 4% cities is deteriorating.

while the water quality is deteriorating, the pollution discharge status of enterprises has not stopped, and it is getting worse. Why do companies dare to be so bold? Firstly, China's legislation is not perfect. The law regulating underground sewage discharge in China is mainly the Law on the Prevention and Control of Water Pollution, in which Article 76 clearly stipulates that "anyone who discharges or dumps wastewater containing toxic pollutants, sewage containing pathogens or other wastes through seepage wells, pits, fissures or caves … shall be fined between 5, yuan and 5, yuan. For millions and millions of sewage treatment equipment, the weight is self-evident. Under the law, enterprises still dare to directly discharge untreated industrial wastewater into the ground. The root cause is that the rule of law in reality is weak and the fundamental interests of business owners cannot be touched. It is not difficult to understand that they are desperate.

Imperfect legislation and weak rule of law are only the symptoms of the problem. In the process of law enforcement, the environmental protection department's single-handedness has greatly reduced law enforcement. The solution of environmental problems needs the cooperation of many departments within the government, and it is difficult for the weak environmental protection department to solve all the problems by itself. Within the government, the intervention of the judiciary will fill the "short board" of the environmental protection department.

In the pollution incident of Zijin Mining in p>21, if it is punished according to the Law on the Prevention and Control of Water Pollution, the fine can only be calculated according to 3% of the direct losses caused by the water pollution accident. However, after the intervention of the judicial department, the relevant responsible person can be prosecuted according to the crime of major environmental pollution accident in the Criminal Law, which can break through the threshold of 3% of administrative punishment and impose a fine on the responsible person according to the actual damages. It can be seen that the effective intervention of the judicial department is beneficial to enhance the deterrence of environmental protection supervision.

another important reason for enterprises to discharge sewage without restraint is that the rights protection mechanism in China is not perfect, especially the system of "public interest litigation". If the domestic public interest litigation is relatively perfect, any individual citizen who suffers from bad air pollution and water body infringement can directly demand rights protection from relevant enterprises in the name of public interest litigation and sue administrative inaction in court, which is believed to be a deterrent to enterprises.

The system of public interest litigation in western countries, especially the United States, is quite perfect and mature. However, China has not really implemented this system at present, and public interest litigation is only a theory in China at present. Moreover, in China, there are many restrictions on the implementation of public interest litigation, and it is difficult to fill the loopholes in environmental supervision, no matter at the legal level or the actual operation level. There are very few public interest litigation cases filed by citizens or social organizations for the plaintiff.

The environment is overdrawn indefinitely, and the groundwater is very slow to renew and self-purify. Once it is polluted, the environmental and ecological damage is often irreversible for a long time, and people will eventually become victims of the environment.