China's environmental authorities have completed a third round of inspection into environmental violations in seven provincial regions including Tianjin Municipality and Central China's Hunan Province, and 405 people have been detained and 4,660 held accountable for environmental violations.
According to a statement released on the official Sina Weibo account of China's Ministry of Environmental Protection on Tuesday, the inspection teams have reported their findings to local authorities, urging them to rectify environmental violations, make plans accordingly and hand their plans to the State Council.
In this round of inspections, the MEP inspectors looked into a total of 31,457 cases in the seven provincial regions, said the post.
The inspectors also found that environmental protection regulators in Hunan ignored environmental problems caused by some large companies, allowing them to break the law for quite a long time. The inspection team asked regulators in the province to deal with 4,583 cases and handed a combined 63.5 million yuan ($9.4 million) fine to violators.
The inspection team also found illegal sand mining in the East Dongting Lake Nature Reserve, which caused a loss of 4,000 mu (266.7 hectares) of wetland. The wetland used to be a major habitat for migratory anseriformes in winter, news site thepaper.cn reported on Monday.
In Tianjin, the team has found weak air pollution control, and pollution of water by sewage, according to the Xinhua News Agency on Monday.
