Guangdong: Strengthening Environmental Management of Industrial Park

After many years of development, Guangdong petrochemical industry has been highly concentrated, giants are clustered, industrial transformation and upgrading are constantly advancing, and the construction of chemical industry parks is developing steadily towards standardization and greening. This year, Guangdong Province issued new environmental protection regulations to strengthen environmental management of chemical industry parks and promote green and sustainable development of chemical industry parks in the province.

As early as last year, Guangdong Province issued a circular asking for the opinions of Guangdong Province's Action Plan for Winning the Blue Sky Defence War (2018-2020). It asked the Pearl River Delta region to prohibit the new chemical parks and the new production and use of solvent-based coatings, inks and adhesives with high VOCs content.

This year, Guangdong Province pays more attention to strengthening the environmental management of parks. On April 15, the "Opinions on Further Strengthening Environmental Protection in Industrial Parks" issued by the Guangdong Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment will be formally implemented. The Opinions put forward requirements in terms of scientific planning, strict access, speeding up facilities construction and strengthening environmental supervision. For parks that seriously pollute the environment and destroy the ecosystem, the competent department of ecological environment may put forward suggestions to the relevant departments for cancellation and delisting. Opinions put forward that the "three-line and one-single" (i.e. red line of ecological protection, bottom line of environmental quality and online utilization of resources, list of ecological environment access) should be implemented in the park. Based on the requirement of "three lines, one sheet" management and control, the park management organizations should combine the national and local industrial policies to strictly access the environment. Planning and construction are prohibited for projects listed in the negative list of environmental access.

Concentrated treatment of wastewater in the park is stipulated in the Opinion on pollution control. The park should set up water supply and drainage system on the principle of "rainwater and sewage diversion, sewage clearance diversion and reclaimed water reuse". According to the relevant requirements of water pollution prevention and control action plan, it should build centralized sewage treatment facilities and install automatic online monitoring devices. The sewage outlet of the centralized sewage treatment facilities in the park should be standardized, and in principle, a sewage outlet should be set up in a park. In the parks where the discharge of water and air pollutants exceeds the requirement of total quantity control or the environmental quality of the region decreases significantly, we should strengthen investigation and implement rectification; encourage the parks to implement central heating; encourage the parks to build their own supporting facilities for collecting and treating solid waste, and reduce, recycle and treat solid waste in accordance with the law and regulations.

In the aspect of environmental monitoring, the Opinion stipulates that the monitoring mechanism of atmospheric environmental quality in the park should be established to monitor the status and changes of atmospheric environmental quality in the park and its surrounding areas, and gradually expand from "one garden, one spot" to the surrounding areas. For parks that seriously pollute the environment and destroy the ecosystem, the competent department of ecological environment may make suggestions to the relevant departments to cancel or delist them. The government issued policies to urge, and the chemical industry parks also actively corresponded. Last year, the Daya Bay Petrochemical Zone in Huizhou, Guangdong, adhered to the main tone of green development, strictly implemented the "one vote veto" for safety and environmental protection, vigorously implemented the "Ten Action for Air Pollution Prevention and Control", and vigorously implemented the ecological development of green development, cyclical development and low-carbon development, which effectively promoted the process of building a world-class petrochemical industry base in the Daya Bay Petrochemical Zone. It is reported that since last year, Daya Bay Petrochemical Zone has built the first automatic monitoring system of air characteristic factors in Guangdong Province, which monitors more than 40 Petrochemical characteristic factors in the park all-weather. It has built a greening isolation zone of 2.33 square kilometers around the petrochemical zone. It has taken the lead in developing enterprise groundwater monitoring in the national petrochemical zone and commissioning a third party to carry out VOCs investigation and treatment. Driven by the concept of circular development, the excellent rate of air quality in this area was 94.6% last year, and the water quality of coastal functional areas reached the standard of 100%. In addition, the trend of cluster and intensive development of refining and chemical industry in Guangdong is still strengthening. One of Sinopec's largest projects under construction and the first 10 million tons/year refining project of Zhongke Refining and Chemical Company in Guangdong Province has entered the "fast lane". PetroChina's 20 million tons/year refining project in South China Sea is expected to be completed and put into operation in 2020. Guangdong Province will soon have 80 million tons/year refining capacity and gradually form a world-class super large petrochemical industry cluster.