End cheating in environmental appraisals

JIXIAN COUNTY IN TIANJIN HAS BEEN RUNNING A WASTE-TO-ENERGY PLANT since April, after local residents apparently gave it a green light two years ago. In its environmental impact evaluation, the local bureau of environmental protection said 200 questionnaires had been distributed in the 10 villages nearby and 96.5 percent of the respondents had said "yes" to the plant. Yet recently, residents from six of the villages said they never saw the questionnaire or received any other advance notice of the plant. Beijing News says it is highly possible that the power plant fabricated the signatures of villagers and submitted a false report to the local bureau of environmental protection:

This is not the only case of its kind. There have been many reports of enterprises falsifying such questionnaire results; in some cases, they even "obtained" the signatures of people who died in the 1990s. This is not funny. Behind each case, the health and even the lives of local residents might be put at risk.

One of the main reasons for this is a loophole in the law. According to the current regulation on public participation in environmental impact evaluation, public opinion must be sought in advance for programs that might have a serious environmental impact, but the regulation does not specify how. In practice, it is always the enterprises that "solicit" public opinions, and some of them cheat in the process because a "yes" result is essential for their interests.