Eco-concerns swirl over airport as missing report reappears

"Two thumbs up!" Wang Rui (pseudonym) wrote on her Sina Weibo on May 8 when an airplane took off from Shanghai, in the first flight from the east costal city to her hometown Shennongjia, Central China's Hubei province.

"This is like a dream come true. You would not understand how much trouble we had to go through for a trip back home and the flight could make our lives much easier," Wang, a university student in Wuhan, told the Global Times.

Shennongjia, the hometown of Wang and some 70,000 others, is a national 5A-Class Scenic Spot and China's highest official scenic spot with vast rainforest and thousands of types of flora and fauna, including the endangered golden monkey. UNESCO added Shennongjia to its World Network of Biosphere Reserves in 1990.

Construction of the airport there officially started in April 2011, Wuhan Evening News reported. The construction process involved the removal of five mountaintops and filled in hundreds of caves for airport foundations. More than 3 million tons of explosives have reportedly been used to excavate a highway through the mountains, the newspaper reported.

This immediately stirred public concern as to whether the ecological impact had been assessed. Multiple media reports have criticized local government for seemingly letting the airport construction go ahead without an environment impact assessment (EIA) report. Plenty of locals were nonplussed by the scrutiny.

"It is a pity that you could not understand our joy. Why would people bother to poke into our hometown rather than look into the smog and pollution around you," wrote another Net user on his blog, which was then supported by a number of local residents including Wang.

Although some locals reacted defensively, journalists and environmental campaigners have been quick to point out that the nation is plagued with environmental problems, often caused by a lack of EIA reports.

'Missing' report

Although the Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) confirmed to the Global Times last year that the highest airport in Central China had passed an environmental assessment and parties constructing the airport were urged to open the report to the public as soon as possible, the whereabouts of the report remained a mystery until very recently.

The MEP's approval was released on May 6 on the government website of Shennongjia and two days later, a link to the much anticipated report was brought to light, which read that the report was published on October 18, 2013, on the official website of the local environmental protection bureau.

However, the Chinese Business Journal claimed on May 5 that no information regarding the "missing assessment report" has been available as of press time. "It has always been there since it was published last year. We never hid or deleted it. I don't know why so many reporters could not find it. We could easily find it ourselves," an anonymous publicity official with local government said.

The revealed EIA did not ease public doubts, as many people questioned why multiple media reports failed to dig out the reports earlier. "Of course it is suspicious. The whole EIA system is flawed," Hangzhou-based environment lawyer Ke Rongming said, sounding agitated when he was reached by the Global Times.

Ke's lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Department of Zhejiang Province was suspended in 2013 when he sued the government body for poor information disclosure regarding a local garbage incineration plant.

Dereliction of EIA duty

"They keep EIA reports in the dark so that faults in their operation will not be discovered. Otherwise environmental protection bodies should be responsible for approving the projects. Moreover, urban planning authorities must also be punished for approval of such projects," Ke said.

Ke pointed out that the root of the problem lies in the Environmental Impact Assessment Law, which came into effect in 2003 and "looks good but has lurking risks."

Construction projects are required to assemble an EIA before commencement according to the Law. But Clause 31 reads that projects already under construction, without an EIA, must assemble the report within strict deadlines. In these cases, the project can only be fined up to 200,000 yuan and people in charge would receive administrative punishments.

"The clause just became the legal excuse for polluters or questionable projects to go ahead with the construction and pay the fine afterwards," Ke noted.

In the context of projects worth billions, a 200,000 yuan penalty seems trivial, Ke added, also pointing out that sometimes personal connections with law enforcement department can further bring down the price.

Even projects which have EIA reports have flaws, particularly given the fact that some EIA institutes offer fabricated reports and lie about public approval. A previous report by the People's Daily in January 2013 revealed that 65 signatures collected to approve a garbage incineration plant were names borrowed from dead people or fugitives.

Many EIA institutes are affiliated with local government environmental protection authorities, which also raised doubts about fairness and neutrality, according to Ke. "The environmental protection authorities need more independence, other than being a government body that makes concessions for urban planning authorities."

Tourists flood in

Hu Hongxing, a retired professor from Wuhan University and also a leading expert on bird species in Shennongjia, has previously concluded that although the impact of the airport would be manageable, long-term observation is needed to measure the full results.

Hubei Daily reported earlier that the scenic spot received 164,900 tourists during 2014 Spring Festival. The number of tourists has increased nine times since completion of a local railway in 2012.

Judging from the EIA, which reads that the airport is located nearly 10 kilometers away from natural reserves in the region, the airport would not have a huge impact on local ecology, said Zhang Yujun, a professor at Beijing Forestry University.

"Natural reserves are usually divided into three sections. The core area is strictly forbidden for tourism or any kind of exploitation and the experimental zone is open for scientific research, while tourism development and a limited amount of basic infrastructure can be allowed in the buffer zone."

"There must be a careful calculation of Shennongjia's capacity to receive tourists and an appointment system should be set up to control the number of tourists and ease the burden on the local environment," said Zhang.