Local govts get greater role over environmental issues

The nation's new Environmental Protection Law, which will take effect on Jan 1, will increase the responsibility of local governments in dealing with environmental problems, bringing them unprecedented power and challenges at the same time.

The new law will give local government bodies, especially environmental protection departments, increased supervisory duties. Among those responsibilities will be conducting on-site checks of polluting enterprises, closing down and seizing facilities that are causing severe pollution, and creating alarm systems to warn the public about pollution incidents.

"The basic quality of the environment is a public good, and a public service that the government must ensure to provide," said then-vice-premier Li Keqiang when attending the Seventh National Environmental Protection Convention in December 2011.