In May 2024, the Fifth Central Ecological and Environmental Protection Inspection Team inspected Hunan Province and found that Zhangjiajie City and Yongzhou City had extensive management of construction waste, lagging behind in the construction of disposal capacity, and a large amount of construction waste was mixed and dumped randomly, with prominent problems of ecological damage and environmental pollution.

I. Basic Situation

According to the requirements of the Law on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste, Hunan Province issued the "14th Five-Year Plan" Solid Waste Environmental Management Plan, and set the resource utilization rate of construction waste to reach more than 70% by 2025 as a binding indicator. The inspection found that the construction waste disposal capacity of Zhangjiajie City and Yongzhou City was seriously insufficient. In 2023, the resource utilization rate of construction waste was less than 10%, far below the provincial average, and illegal dumping was frequent.

II. Main Problems

First, there is a lack of planning and the construction of resource utilization facilities is lagging behind. The Law on the Prevention and Control of Environmental Pollution by Solid Waste stipulates that local people's governments at or above the county level shall formulate plans for the prevention and control of environmental pollution by construction waste. The inspection found that Zhangjiajie City and Yongzhou City did not pay enough attention to the disposal of construction waste, and the planning preparation was slow. Among the four counties (districts) in Zhangjiajie City and the 11 counties (districts) in Yongzhou City, three and ten counties (districts) respectively have not yet issued plans. Due to the lack of planning and poor work coordination, the two cities have not yet built standardized construction waste resource utilization facilities. In 2020, Zhangjiajie City introduced the Northwest Hunan Urban Solid Waste Green Recycling Project, which is the only construction waste resource utilization project in the city. The 4,000 tons/day cement production line of the project's supporting project has been put into production in 2023, while the construction waste disposal production line, which is the main project of the project, is still in the preliminary work stage such as land leveling.

Figure 1On May 13, 2024, the inspection team found on-site that the construction waste disposal production line of the Northwest Hunan Urban Solid Waste Green Recycling Project had only completed land leveling

Yongzhou City began planning the construction of construction waste resource utilization facilities in 2018. Due to factors such as poor planning coordination and unimplemented site selection and land acquisition, the work has been delayed again and again and has not yet been completed.

Second, there is a lack of supervision, and the phenomenon of random dumping is common. The "Hunan Province Urban Construction Waste Management Implementation Rules" stipulate that the generation, transportation, and disposal of construction waste shall be subject to a full-process joint form management system. The municipal and municipal sanitation and environmental sanitation authorities shall organize the establishment of a construction waste information supervision and management platform to record information such as the source, type, amount received, and amount disposed of construction waste. The inspection found that Zhangjiajie City and Yongzhou City did not implement the joint form management system. Although the Zhangjiajie City Construction Waste Information Supervision and Management Platform was completed in March 2023, it has not recorded any information on the disposal of construction waste, which is tantamount to a mere formality. The Yongzhou City platform only records vehicle trajectory information and cannot achieve full-process supervision.

Due to long-term poor supervision, illegal dumping problems are frequent in Zhangjiajie City and Yongzhou City, and the problem is particularly prominent in the urban-rural fringe. Spot checks found that there were illegal dumping of construction waste near Hejiashan in Dayongqiao Street, Yongding District, Zhangjiajie City, near Mozipo in Lingyang Town, Cili County, Longtang Village in Shanglingqiao Town, Yongzhou City, south of the International Agricultural Products Trading Center, and in the land on the south side of Yongzhou Interchange, and the masses responded strongly.

Figure 2 On April 8, 2024, the inspection team secretly found that construction waste was illegally dumped in the land on the south side of Yongzhou Interchange

Third, the problem of environmental pollution and ecological damage is prominent. The Huamuwan construction waste dumping site and Weijiawan construction waste dumping site in Yongding District, Zhangjiajie City are designed to only accept construction waste. The inspectors found that the Huamuwan construction waste dump illegally received demolition waste, decoration waste and domestic waste, mixed with a large amount of white waste such as foam, plastic, rubber, coating, paint and toxic and hazardous substances. The storage height was more than ten meters, covering an area of more than 100 acres, with a total volume of about 290,000 cubic meters. The Weijiawan construction waste dump was shut down in 2022 and has been unsupervised for a long time, becoming a dumping point for domestic waste, decoration waste, and waste furniture. According to monitoring, the chemical oxygen demand concentrations of the accumulated water in the Huamuwan construction waste dump and the Weijiawan construction waste dump were 55 mg/L and 227 mg/L, respectively, which exceeded the surface water Class III standard by 1.7 times and 10.3 times, respectively.

Figure 3 On April 17, 2024, the inspection team secretly found that the Weijiawan construction waste dump was piled up with domestic garbage, decoration garbage, and old furniture.

The inspection also found that the Xijie construction waste disposal site in Sangzhi County, Zhangjiajie City, had not handled the forest land procedures and occupied 16.7 acres of forest land. 16.2 acres of forest land in Zhenzhutang Village, Lengshuitang District, Yongzhou City was occupied by construction waste.

Figure 4 On April 9, 2024, the inspection team secretly found that the forest land in Zhenzhutang Village, Lengshuitang District, Yongzhou City was occupied by construction waste.

III. Cause Analysis

Zhangjiajie City and Yongzhou City have long neglected the disposal of construction waste, the relevant departments have not performed their duties properly, daily supervision is weak, and the problem of random dumping is prominent.

The inspection team will further investigate and verify the relevant situation and carry out follow-up inspections as required.

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