Threat of pollution growing in Pearl River Delta

GUANGZHOU: Guangdong's relatively clean inland areas will face a growing threat from pollution if environmental problems are not properly handled during the industrial transfer, a government report said on Wednesday.

Twenty-eight industrial parks in the province's inland cities, designed to accommodate labor-intensive industries from the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region, do not have proper water treatment facilities, the provincial development and reform committee said in the report. Three of the parks, in Heyuan, Dianbai and Meizhou, are building sewage disposal factories, but none was operational at the end of September.

The other 25 parks simply don't have such facilities, the report said. "The environmental problem in these industrial parks remains a big concern," it said. The committee's findings were the latest concern about the green cost during the province's industrial transfer campaign.