How to treat the government's position of "not understanding and not building" on garbage incineration?

Taihu County, Anhui Province plans to start a domestic waste incineration power generation project, which has aroused public concern. On May 4th, the official announcement of Taihu County stated that the county party committee and government attached great importance to environmental protection and would never do anything that would damage the ecological environment and people's health. We will certainly follow scientific laws and act according to law. Without the full understanding and support of the masses, the project will not start, and the necessary legal procedures for project construction will not be fully fulfilled, so as to maximize the protection of the people's right to know, participate and supervise.

"Don't understand, don't build" is the greatest respect for public opinion. However, how can such a major project wait until the bidding for franchise rights is completed before thinking of "protecting the people's right to know, participate and supervise"? According to the law, public opinions should be collected before the environmental impact assessment of waste incineration power generation project in Taihu County, but why did the public not show an attitude of "don't understand" and "don't support" in such opinions collection?

In other words, I'm afraid it's a question whether this garbage power generation project really ensures public participation when doing environmental assessment. Not only in Taihu County, in recent years, many local waste incineration power generation projects have frequently caused controversy, which has a lot to do with public participation in environmental assessment.

Earlier, the media reported that the questionnaire of Tianjin Jixian Waste Incineration Power Plant was fraudulent, and the EIA report said that 96.5% of the villagers interviewed were in favor of the construction of the project, but the village committees of six villages all said that the villagers had never seen the publicity of related projects. The 50,000 negative votes of the environmental impact assessment of Dongguan Mayong Waste Incineration Plant inexplicably "evaporated", and the local media even reported that the environmental impact assessment of Mayong Waste Treatment Plant was publicized for two days without any opinions. The environmental impact assessment of Zhejiang Xiaoshan Waste Incineration Plant involved fraud, and residents were "voted". Many residents on the positive list said that they had never seen the questionnaire at all.

It is no exaggeration to say that every dispute over garbage power generation projects is almost accompanied by fraudulent behavior of public questionnaires.

Therefore, the government will not wait until the situation is serious before saying "without understanding, it will not start work". It is better to do a good job of public questionnaire survey in environmental impact assessment with the work moving forward to win people's understanding. The key for people to understand the garbage power generation project is the transparency of information. The more open the information is, the more people's concerns can be dispelled, and the more the safety of garbage power generation projects can be objectively evaluated.

For garbage power generation projects, public opinion collection has repeatedly become a mere formality, local governments have not achieved "public understanding", and the law cannot be silent. Public participation in fraud in the environmental impact assessment of waste-to-energy power generation projects is not only directly involved by the environmental impact assessment agencies, but also by local governments. If things always go wrong, the local government can say "don't understand, don't build" and get away with it, and the EIA is not subject to any investigation, then the prestige of the law will be swept away.

In many places, garbage siege has become an increasingly urgent problem. However, there is no place to put the garbage, so it can only be burned. In fact, compared with garbage incineration, garbage sorting and recycling may not be so effective, but it is a more environmentally friendly and acceptable method for the people. In many countries, due to the improvement of garbage sorting and recycling system, many garbage incinerators even fall into an embarrassing situation where there is no garbage to burn. Therefore, classified recycling is the right way to deal with garbage. Instead of blindly turning around on waste incineration, local governments should use their brains to promote waste sorting and recycling.

Source: Phoenix Review!