The Taicang section of the Yangtze River, the river is open, the river is voluminous, and the ships are like shuttles. The rushing river water, a small amount of floating garbage washed to the shore. This season, compared to the summer flood time, the river looks dry and clean. But a year ago, on Dec. 13, 2016, the surface of the Taicang section of the Yangtze River was paved with garbage.
Where did the trash come from? Why was it thrown into the Yangtze River? A year later, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, the relevant procuratorial organs of the case of illegal dumping of domestic garbage, a domestic garbage as a "resource", garbage disposal fees for profiteering crime chain has also been uncovered.
Recently, the criminal chain of illegal dumping of garbage in Jiangsu and Zhejiang was investigated in depth, and serious loopholes were found in the supervision of domestic garbage disposal, such as bidding fraud, receiving and disposing of fake certificates, and subcontracting of garbage at different levels. In the "garbage city" background, the case exposed these problems to other cities across the country has an important warning significance.
About 30,000 tons of garbage was thrown into the Yangtze River
Harmful substances exceeded the standard by 30,000 times
"I've never seen so much garbage...red, black, white.... ...Discarded plastic bags and bottles of all colors rose and fell with the waves of the river, interspersed with some medical waste. The embankment slopes are also covered with garbage washed up by the river, which is many times more compared to the daily amount of garbage." After a year, Xu Yihui, brigade commander of the Taicang Maritime Bureau's second marine patrol enforcement brigade, still remembers it vividly.
Deep winter season, the amount of floating garbage on the river surface but for days abnormally increased, which caused Xu Yihui's alarm. After the situation was reported, Taicang Maritime Safety Bureau suspected that there were ships illegally dumping garbage, so it secretly deployed to search for suspicious ships.
On the morning of December 18, 2016, Qin Liyong, a supervisor of the Taicang Maritime Bureau's Second Sea Patrol Enforcement Brigade, and his colleagues were cruising when they found two vessels washing at the mouth of Yanglin River. "This is not an anchorage, and it is reasonable that these two vessels should not anchor here." Qin Liyong recalled, "We got close enough to check, smelled the putrid odor, and realized that they were actually suspicious vessels throwing garbage."
The Taicang police station of the Suzhou branch of the Yangtze River Shipping Public Security Bureau then took over the case. After interrogation, the owners of the two boats explained that on the first night, they sailed their boats to the center of the river, turned off all electronic equipment and lights on board, and took advantage of the darkness to use floating cranes to throw about 2,000 tons of garbage from the two boats into the Yangtze River.
The fall of the two boats tore open a corner of the criminal chain of illegal garbage dumping. Subsequently, the police in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai cooperated with each other, and the people involved in the case were arrested one by one. The source of the garbage was also identified, mainly from Haiyan and Haining in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province. So far, Jiangsu prosecutors approved the arrest of nine people, and Zhejiang Jiaxing prosecutors approved the arrest of 25 people.
In Haining, 14 boatloads*** of more than 9,700 tons of household garbage were shipped from the local Pengdun dock between November and December 2016, the indictment by the Haining City Procuratorate said. The garbage was eventually dumped directly into the Nantong and Taicang sections of the Yangtze River by the relevant suspects involved. In Haiyan County, between August and December 2016, 26 boatloads***counting about 20,000 tons of domestic garbage were transported from the local Huangqiao dock, which were likewise thrown directly into the Nantong and Taicang sections of the Yangtze River and other places.
"This is only a well-documented amount, and the actual garbage thrown into the river may be far more." Han Lijia, deputy head of the public prosecution section of the Changshu Municipal People's Procuratorate, said. According to the relevant jurisdictional provisions, in Jiangsu, the case was eventually handed over to the Changshu Municipal People's Procuratorate for public prosecution, and Han Lijia was the organizing prosecutor of the case. He also told the Economic Reference Daily that among the household garbage from Haiyan, about 15,000 tons were also transported to illegal landfills in Huzhou, Zhejiang and Anhui.
The garbage, though coming from Haiyan and Haining, subcontracted for disposal by different companies, and transported out by different ships, was finally handed over to Sha's gang at the end of the crime chain to be dumped into the Yangtze River. According to the police investigation in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the ship transporting garbage generally travels to the river by darkness, and then turns off all kinds of electronic equipment and lighting facilities such as ship navigation, in order to evade the supervision of government departments. At the same time, the arrangement of floating cranes close to the lifting operation, arranged for people driving speedboats in the vicinity of the wind or ferry, pilotage. After the lifting and unloading operation is completed, the pump boat will also be arranged to clean the transportation vessel.
Han Lijia introduced, by the third-party environmental protection agency testing, these illegal dumping, landfill waste contains toxic, harmful substances, including volatile phenol from Haiyan's domestic waste exceeded the standard 80 times to 32,200 times ranging. In the Taicang section of the Yangtze River, two centralized drinking water sources in Taicang City were forced to interrupt water intake for more than 48 hours and 55 hours respectively because the dumping site is located in the upstream of the drinking water source protection zone.
"So much garbage floating on the river surface not only affects the water quality of the Yangtze River, but also threatens the safety of boats. If there is garbage involved in the propeller, the boat river suddenly anchored, very easy to cause collision and other safety accidents." Xu Yihui said.
After the case, in order to prevent the pollution from expanding and eliminate it, Taicang municipal government and relevant departments of Shanghai Chongming district government salvaged the garbage that was thrown into the river, and although the amount that could be salvaged was very limited, it incurred costs of up to more than 12 million yuan.
Because the law is loose, all supervision is absent.