China targets dirty businesses in water pollution action plan

China has ordered the closure of small plants in 10 dirty industries and a clampdown on the tapping of underground water sources in a renewed effort to tackle contamination.

An action plan released on Thursday lowers import tariffs on components for treatment plants and other equipment used to cut water pollution. The initiative offers to international companies an opportunity as China cleans up after years of unfettered industrialisation.

Pollution is becoming a political liability for the ruling Communist party as citizens become more aware of the extent of the damage done to the country's air, rivers and soil.

"At present, water quality in some regions of our country is poor, the water ecology has been damaged severely and hidden dangers of environmental problems are prominent," the report said.

The goal is to make more than 93 per cent of the supply to cities meet the standard of "water suitable for drinking" by 2020, and raise above 70 per cent the proportion of water meeting that standard in seven river basins. About 63 per cent of water in those rivers meets the standard, according to Financial Times calculations.

Authorities in Beijing, Tianjin, a neighbouring metropolis, and Hebei province and in the Pearl and Yangtze river deltas have been told to identify areas where the tapping of aquifers should be limited or forbidden.

Depletion of aquifers is acute in those areas and the wider North China plain, where farmers, golf courses and luxury compounds rely on wells. To help hydrate the arid north, China last year inaugurated the South-North Water Diversion project that draws supplies from the Yangtze Basin to the capital.

"As long as there is a wall in the suburbs and villages around Beijing you can see advertisements for well diggers, and they have to dig deeper and deeper because the aquifer is lower and lower," said Dai Qing, an environmentalist who has raised the alarm at the rapid drop in aquifer levels.

The plan also assigns tasks to specific industries, recognising that previous top-down attempts to address pollution have often been hobbled by competing bureaucratic interests.

Industries ordered shut include fertiliser and coking plants, small tanneries, paper mills and oil refineries. Larger plants will be given access to technology to reduce the discharge of polluted wastewater, the plan says.

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Potential also exists for other unintended consequences.

An air pollution management plan released about 18 months ago to cap coal use in prosperous eastern areas merely pushed polluters to poorer or arid areas, further damaging the sources of rivers that flow through big cities, say critics.

Additional reporting by Owen Guo

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