HEBEI –
Beijing in northern China Beijing in the north of Beijing, said it will absorb lessons from the haze in the region last week to strengthen clean air efforts.
Last year, Hebei is one of China’s 10 most haze cities, has announced that 2017 will be “transformation and upgrading”, the province announced on Saturday the official website (http://www.hebei.gov.cn).
China has repeatedly vowed to curb air, soil and water pollution caused by economic growth for more than 30 years. Beijing often ranks high on the list of the most polluted cities in China.
The average concentration of small, breathable particles, known as PM2.5, in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, lasted more than 500 μg / m3 for three consecutive days, 50 times higher than the World Health Organization’s recommendation.
In the first official response to last week’s smoke explosion, governor Zhang Qingwei said that Hebei would strive to improve the “scientific level of accuracy” in pollution control.
Hebei has been at the forefront of China’s “pollution war” for nearly three years, but experts say law enforcement is still slow due to worries about the impact of smoke control on economic growth and employment.
Eight cities in Hebei province last week issued a “red alert,” a record haze for some of the county’s monitoring stations, but it quickly came under intense scrutiny from the environmental ministry, some of which failed to halt operations .
Zhang said in a commentary on Monday that Hebei needed better “top-level planning” when it sought to adjust its industrial and energy structure.
Hebei province will also develop more detailed plans to deal with the main sources of smoke such as direct burning of coal, the provincial government said on its official website (http://www.hebei.gov.cn).
The province aims to cut PM2.5 concentrations by an average of 67 micrograms per cubic meter, up from 77 micrograms in 2015, officials warned, and recent eruptions could make China’s pollution targets difficult to achieve.
