Nine major industrial plants in the southern city of Guangzhou will be removed from the city's urban centre by 2010 as part of an anti-pollution drive, sources with the Guangzhou environmental protection department said recently.

The move comes after the Guangzhou Hoton Chemical (Group) Co Ltd, one of the key raw chemical production bases in the city, was blacklisted by the national environmental protection watchdog earlier this month for causing "serious problems," including potentially excessive pollution.

The nine enterprises, which include the Hoton company, were set up in the area when it was mainly an industrial zone, but more residential areas have since been created there in the wake of urban expansion.

The Hoton firm, which was set up in 1956, now has more than 12,000 people living within a 500-metre radius of the plant and 100,000 residents within a 1,500-metre radius.

The eastern part of Guangzhou, where the Hoton company is located, has developed into one of the city's booming business and residential centres.

"A decade ago, we did not expect that the area around our company would have so many people living in it now," said Kuang Chaochun, managing director of the Hoton company.

He claimed the company has been considering relocating out of the area since 2002. He stressed the firm was conscious of the need to protect the local environment.

"We attach great importance to production safety. We have an environmental protection office to inspect and examine environmental effects and deal with possible production problems," Kuang said in an interview.

However, the company was one of 11 chemical plants which were named by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) in a nationwide survey of 78 factories for posing serious environmental threats and potential dangers.

Sources with the SEPA said that Hoton did not have any warning signs or facilities to deal with possible chemical spills, asking for the plant to be moved out of the residential area.

"A chemical spill, together with other environmental threats, would lead to a disaster not only for the chemical plant, but most importantly the residents, so it is necessary to remove the plant out of the residential areas," said an official surnamed Huang, with the Guangzhou Environmental Bureau.

Although there have been no serious environmental cases related to the Hoton company since its establishment, the company will still be moved out of the residential area by 2008, according to Huang.

Along with the relocation plan for the nine industrial plants, the local government is conducting a new round of inspections of the city's chemical factories until June.

"Any plants found to have potential dangers or posing great serious environmental threats would be asked to install or upgrade the required facilities," Huang said.

Apart from the inspection programme, Zhang Jinmeng, a professor from South China University of Technology, said the city needed to better position its industrial structure to prevent potential environmental risks from happening in the long-term.

According to Zhang, about half of the Guangzhou-based plants to be relocated specialize in chemical products and are located along the Pearl River, posing the severe threat of water pollution to the city.

"An imbalance of the industrial structure will also lead to a possible major environmental crisis," Zhang said.

Guangzhou's proposals to relocate chemical plants are in accordance with a national environmental campaign in the wake of last November's chemical spill in northeast China's Songhua River which triggered the country's biggest environmental crisis.

SEPA is supervising and launching national inspections targeting medium and large-sized enterprises along major rivers and their tributaries, especially chemical plants in water-source areas or densely populated regions.

(China Daily February 21, 2006)