Recently, Lujiazui took five units in Suzhou to court and demanded RMB 10.044 billion in compensation. Schematic diagram, the picture shows the suspended real estate of Taicang Evergrande Cultural Tourism City in Suzhou City on September 17, 2021. (Vivian Lin/AFP)
[The Epoch Times, November 11, 2023](Comprehensive report by Epoch Times reporter Li Jing) As a major economic province in China, Jiangsu Province has had many “poisonous land” incidents, and the “poisonous land” in Suzhou, the economic center of the province, has The case revealed the inside story of the local government’s efforts to “turn waste into treasure” from contaminated land. In fact, these inside stories are just the tip of the iceberg of land pollution cases in China.
Recently, Shanghai Lujiazui Financial and Trade Zone Development Co., Ltd. (referred to as “Lujiazui”) announced that 14 properties under the name of Green Bank were listed for sale to Jiangsu Suzhou Iron and Steel Group Co., Ltd. (referred to as “Suzhou Iron and Steel Group”) that the company won in 2016. There is pollution in the land, and the pollution area and degree of pollution far exceed the pollution situation disclosed by Suzhou Iron and Steel Group Co., Ltd. when it was listed for sale.
In response to the above-mentioned soil pollution problem, Lujiazui has taken five units including Suzhou Iron and Steel Group, Suzhou Environmental Science Institute, and Suzhou Municipal Natural Resources and Planning Bureau to court, and claimed RMB 10.044 billion from Suzhou Iron and Steel Group.
On November 10, the official account of Suzhou Iron and Steel Group issued a statement on the above accusations, saying that when it transferred its equity in 2016, the company had truthfully disclosed the existence of land under the name of Suzhou Green Bank (formerly a wholly-owned subsidiary of Suzhou Iron and Steel) to a third-party professional agency. Some of the pollution investigation results and full report.
In addition, Suzhou Iron and Steel Group said that during the development and construction period, Lujiazui Group companies failed to build groundwater barrier walls and take other protective measures in accordance with relevant requirements. “There were behaviors that disturbed groundwater, moved soil and caused cross-contamination of some environments, and construction operations were not standardized. Behavior that causes secondary pollution.”
According to the announcement, the controlling shareholder of Lujiazui is Lujiazui Group, a large state-owned enterprise group affiliated to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of Shanghai Pudong New Area.
In the Suzhou Green Bank project, Lujiazui Group has carried out development and construction since it acquired the land in 2016, including residential buildings, shopping malls, office buildings, schools, etc., and has paid a price of more than 10 billion yuan for this.
Starting from Jinxiu Lanshan Jinyuan Community in the south to Suzhou Reading School in the north, the Suzhou Green Bank project, once known as the first million-square-meter urban regional complex, now looks a bit desolate.
It is reported that Reading School was the first to expose the “poisonous area” incident. According to the memories of local owners, before the “poisonous land” incident broke out in 2021, Reading School had officially opened its enrollment. However, when enrollment was approaching, the testing agency hired by the school found contamination in the soil, causing Reading School to fail the environmental impact assessment. , hastily shut down.
At present, the “Poison Land” incident has resulted in the suspension of sales of 2,800 houses in residential areas, and the regional complex project with an investment of tens of billions has been reduced to a ghost town.
Official agencies changed the nature of the land, causing the million-square-meter urban complex to become an empty city
In fact, the Green Bank project land was originally the old factory area of Suzhou Iron and Steel Group, and several of them were officially confirmed as contaminated land. This type of polluted area could only be used for industrial construction and other aspects, but the nature of the land has been changed many times by local government agencies.
In December 2008, the former Suzhou Municipal Bureau of Land and Resources adjusted the use of some land parcels in the old factory area of Suzhou Iron and Steel Group (mainly non-coking areas) to residential, commercial, and commercial and financial land, and then transferred it to Suzhou Iron and Steel Group.
From 2013 to 2014, the relevant departments of Suzhou City once again approved the adjustment of the land use plan. Part of the original land parcel was set aside for municipal roads and public facilities, and a large area of the original coking area was added. The adjusted Green Bank land parcel was re-purposed. It is divided into 17 sub-plots, and the land uses are changed to residential, commercial, industrial (R&D), education, etc.
Lujiazui Group mentioned in its previous announcement that the area and degree of land pollution far exceeded the pollution situation disclosed by Suzhou Iron and Steel Group when it was listed for transfer. At the same time, during the regulation and transfer process of the land involved in the case, the defendant violated laws and regulations and committed fraud. etc. behavior.
Recently, the “Poisonous Land” incident in Suzhou has continued to escalate. The owner who lives on this land told Chinese media on November 9 that he is currently worried about the spread of poisonous land and just wants to check out. He said that “buying a house on poisonous land is worse than buying an unfinished building.”
According to an announcement issued by Lujiazui Group, a total of 14 of the 17 land parcels in Suzhou Green Bank are contaminated. Test results from a third-party testing agency showed that benzopyrene and naphthalene in the soil in many plots of the Suzhou Green Bank project seriously exceeded standards and did not meet land use standards. Among them, benzopyrene exceeded the legal limit by more than 50 times.
Benzopyrene is recognized as a first-level carcinogen by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). It can enter the body through inhalation, ingestion, and absorption through the skin, causing lung cancer, gastric cancer, bladder cancer, and digestive tract cancer. cancer. Benzopyrene and naphthalene are also toxic to the immune, nervous, and reproductive systems.
Frequent exposure of “poisonous land” cases in Jiangsu Province
In fact, the above-mentioned Suzhou “poisonous land” incident is just the latest exposed case among many land pollution cases in Jiangsu Province.
As early as December 2015, a shocking “poisonous ground” case broke out at Changzhou Foreign Languages School in Jiangsu Province. Some parents went to the new campus of Changzhou Foreign Languages School during pick-up and drop-off hours, and there was a pungent smell around it. Soon after, students at the school’s new location began to experience adverse reactions.
According to statistics from Chinese media, physical examinations of students at the school found: 262 cases of “thyroid nodules”, 194 cases of “lymph enlargement or nodules”, and 90 cases of “abnormal blood indicators”. Some students were diagnosed with lymphoma. However, the Changzhou Municipal Government responded that the soil and groundwater on the land of Changzhou Foreign Languages School were not contaminated.
In March 2018, mainland media reporters used drones to shoot in Guanyun County, Lianyungang City, Jiangsu Province, and discovered shocking scenes of local chemical companies secretly discharging wastewater and waste materials.
Local villagers said that since the chemical park was built, they have not had a good life. The illegal discharge of pollutants from chemical plants has caused a devastating blow to the local ecological environment and has a huge impact on the production and life of local villagers. Officials came to investigate many times, but in the end nothing came of it.
Although the environmental pollution problem in Jiangsu Province has been exposed many times, it has not been improved so far.
In July last year, environmentalists revealed that hundreds of chemical companies were being demolished in the Lianyungang Chemical Industrial Park in Guannan County, Lianyungang City, Jiangsu Province. Some chemical plants did not clean up the pollutants left in the factory for convenience during the demolition process. They began to demolish factories, causing various chemical pollutants to be trapped under the rubble, creating a “poisonous land.”
How many “poisonous places” are there in China?
In addition to Jiangsu, governments in Tianjin, Shandong and other places have been frequently exposed for using land polluted by chemical and pesticide factories to build commercial buildings and develop real estate after modifying environmental impact assessment data.
The Ministry of Environmental Protection of the Communist Party of China conducted a survey on the national soil environment in 2014. The results showed that 16.1% of the country’s soil was polluted beyond the standard. The official data is therefore highly questionable.
Land pollution in China has always received less public attention than air and water pollution, which are visible to the naked eye. Land contamination issues have consequences for food safety and farmer health. According to official testing, the heavy metal cadmium is present in rice sold on the market.
In 2002, relevant departments of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Communist Party of China conducted random safety inspections of rice on the national market. The results showed that the most serious heavy metal in rice that exceeded the standard was lead, with an exceeding rate of 28.4%, followed by cadmium, with a exceeding rate of 10.3%. In 2008, the research team randomly sampled 63 samples from farmers’ markets in Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong and other provinces. The experimental results confirmed that more than 60% of the rice contained cadmium exceeding the national limit.
It is worth noting that a survey report published by the Ministry of Water Resources of the Communist Party of China in 2016 showed that groundwater quality across the country is generally “poor”. More than 80% of groundwater is threatened by pollution and is no longer suitable for human drinking. In some areas, there is a certain degree of heavy metals and toxic substances. Organic contamination.
Mainland scholar Ye Kuangzheng pointed out in his commentary that the “cancer villages” that have been repeatedly exposed in recent years and the concentrated outbreaks of serious and strange diseases in many villages are mostly related to the poisoning of soil and groundwater.
Editor in charge: Ye Ziming#
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2023-11-11 14:27:00
