Xinhua News Agency, Hefei, October 17thQuestion: Where did the garbage on the Yangtze River cargo ship go? — — Investigation on water pollution of Yangtze River cargo ships
Xinhua News Agency "Xinhua Viewpoint" reporters Dong Xue, Wang Xian and Wang Haiyue
There are nearly 120,000 inland cargo ships in 14 provinces and cities of the Yangtze River system, with hundreds of thousands of crew members working and living on the river all the year round, which will produce a lot of pollutants such as domestic garbage, oily sewage, residual oil and chemical washing water.
Recently, "Xinhua Viewpoint" reporters visited docks and boarded ships in many provinces along the Yangtze River, and found that some ships threw garbage into the river and directly discharged oil and sewage into the Yangtze River.
Reporter’s visit: A ship throws garbage into the river and sewage is discharged into the Yangtze River.
The reporter boarded a ship with a tonnage of about 7,000 tons and four crew members on board. The ship’s garbage receiving record book shows that the last time the ship received garbage was eight days ago, but strangely, there was almost no garbage on board.
The reporter opened the three-color trash can on the boat and saw that the trash can half a person high was rice, tools and clothes, and only a few watermelon skins were in the small trash can in the kitchen.
"Leftovers are sometimes thrown into the river." In the face of the reporter’s inquiry, the ship owner replied like this.
When the reporter visited the docks and anchorages along the Yangtze River recently, it was found that the whereabouts of ship garbage were unknown. The reporter boarded 11 ships, and five of them were all like this — — Some have no trash cans, some use trash cans to store things, and some have not collected garbage for many days, but the trash cans are empty. The navigation routes of these ships are not fixed, and they often flow between several provinces in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
The Yangtze River Environmental Protection Association in a certain place has repeatedly investigated the problem of ship pollutants along the Yangtze River. A staff member of the association said, "It is common for ship garbage to be thrown into the Yangtze River. In addition to the domestic garbage on board, there are sometimes material garbage generated by freight transportation."
The reporter found that some ships also directly discharged the sewage from their ships into the Yangtze River.
The reporter found mysterious hoses leading to the river surface on two ships, and the surface was black and oily. The reporter entered the bilge, lit it with a flashlight, and found that the other end of the hose was buried in the oily water under the deck, and there was no depth, next to it was a small pump.
The heads of the two ships admitted to pumping oil and sewage into the Yangtze River. "I have been engaged in shipping for more than two years, and the oily water is pumped into the river by myself, otherwise I will accumulate more?"
Many people in the industry said that the collection and treatment of pollutants from ships in the Yangtze River is still in its infancy. According to the data of the Yangtze River Waterway Administration of the Ministry of Transport, as of the first half of 2019, there were 185 ship pollutant receiving enterprises in the Yangtze River trunk line, and only 226 ships received pollutants; There are about 100,000 ships sailing on the Yangtze River trunk line all the year round, which is equivalent to serving more than 400 ships on average for each receiving ship.
It is understood that since the beginning of this year, only the Chongqing section of the Yangtze River has investigated and dealt with 378 illegal acts of ship water pollution, including cases of discharging domestic sewage and catering sewage during the berthing of the Yangtze River.
Behind the pollution: the construction of receiving facilities is lagging behind and the management measures are imperfect.
Why do these ships throw garbage into the river and discharge sewage directly into the river? According to industry insiders, this is because the construction of pollutant receiving facilities is lagging behind, and on the other hand, the relevant management measures are not perfect.
The Law on the Prevention and Control of Water Pollution stipulates that "the people’s governments at the city and county levels where ports, docks, loading and unloading stations and ship repair plants are located shall make overall plans to build facilities for receiving, transporting, treating and disposing of ship pollutants and wastes." However, due to the lack of specific construction standards, the construction of port ship pollutant receiving facilities is seriously lagging behind.
Many port enterprise leaders reported that there are few ports equipped with complete sets of receiving equipment in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River; Most of the port areas are not connected to the municipal pipe network, and the system of receiving, transporting and disposing of pollutants from ships is not working smoothly. Urban management, environmental protection, port and shipping departments are all in charge of their own affairs, and there is no joint management force.
At the same time, there are still some management loopholes in the collection of pollutants from ships.
Wang Shiming, deputy director of Jiangsu Maritime Safety Administration, said that at present, the collection of ship pollutants mostly adopts market operation, and the units that have been filed by the port administrative department provide paid services. However, some ships are unwilling to accept standardized management and discharge or discard pollutants at random at non-designated receiving points; At the same time, some filing units operate illegally, charge high fees or refuse to collect garbage after charging.
A ship owner said that many crew members had been forced to collect money but did not collect garbage. "As soon as the ship docked, a man ran to ask for money. He only carries a small bag with a list. What does he use to collect garbage? "
Some crew members said, "To put it bluntly, 100 yuan bought a stamp on the garbage record book." They told reporters, "In some places in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, as long as you lean on the dock, garbage boats will come. Whether there is garbage or no garbage, you have to collect 100 yuan money and you can’t run away. " "80 yuan and 50 yuan, who are easy to talk, will do, 100 yuan, who is not easy to talk, and 300 yuan once!"
The ship’s garbage record book also confirmed this problem. Some ships paid garbage fees three times in just six days because they docked at three different docks.
The industry calls for: unified management and combination of unblocking and blocking.
Some people in the industry and related experts suggest that to prevent pollution from ships in the Yangtze River, we should strengthen overall planning, combine dredging and blocking, improve relevant policies, and strengthen the crackdown and control of pollution.
In recent years, some local governments along the Yangtze River are speeding up the construction of port pollutant receiving and transshipment facilities. In Yichang, Jingzhou, Anqing, Wuhu, Chongqing, Nanjing and other places, domestic sewage receiving ships and transshipment terminals have been put into use one after another.
In order to standardize the reception and disposal of pollutants from ships, Jingzhou, Maanshan, Wuhu and other cities along the Yangtze River took the initiative to explore first, adopted the mode of government paying the bill, unified bidding, and the successful bidder received some pollutants free of charge. However, reporters visited these cities and found that most crew members said that they did not understand the relevant free policies.
"Ships are mobile, only around the Yangtze River ‘ A game of chess ’ Unified management can manage the pollutants from ships. " Hu Shibin, president of Anhui Yangtze River Environmental Protection Association, and others suggested that the main responsibility of local governments should be strengthened, and relevant provinces and cities should set up the Yangtze River Ship Pollutant Prevention Fund according to a certain proportion to form a joint force to prevent and control ship pollutants.
The heads of some ship pollutant receiving units called for further improvement of the government’s service purchase plan, setting assessment indicators such as public awareness, public complaints, regular inspections and spot checks, and paying fees according to the actual assessment of the winning enterprises.
Zhang Lin, director of Wuhan Xingang Committee, believes that the monitoring of ship garbage and polluted water should be realized through technical means to improve the ability of on-site treatment and recycling. (Participating in writing: Han Wenzhe)