A draft revision of China's Water Law would raise the maximum fine for unauthorized water withdrawal to 500,000 yuan (77,000), five times the current ceiling, and impose fines of up to 2 million yuan for violations involving water-saving facilities, under a text submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the country's top legislature, for a third reading on Monday.
The draft, under deliberation at the committee's 25th session, running from Monday to Friday in Beijing, splits the current law's single penalty clause on unauthorized water withdrawal into three tiers and replaces the flat fine for water-saving facility violations with an escalating scale, according to the draft articles.
Under the current law, last revised in 2016, unauthorized withdrawal and withdrawal in breach of permit conditions are punished together. Violators are ordered to stop, take remedial measures within a deadline, and pay a fine of 20,000 to 100,000 yuan, with permits revoked in serious cases.
The draft keeps that 20,000-to-100,000-yuan range only for withdrawal that breaches permit conditions, with revocation still available in serious cases. Unauthorized withdrawal gets a separate, heavier track.
Anyone taking water without approval would be ordered to stop and apply for a withdrawal permit within a deadline, and fined 20,000 to 200,000 yuan, double the current ceiling. If the application is not filed in time or is refused, the violator would be ordered to demolish the withdrawal facilities within a deadline, and the facilities would be forcibly demolished at the violator's expense if the order is ignored.
Those taking groundwater without being authorized would face the heaviest penalties. Unauthorized withdrawal of groundwater in zones where extraction is prohibited or restricted would draw a fine of 50,000 to 500,000 yuan, with an order to stop and demolish the facilities within a deadline and forced demolition at the violator's expense if the deadline passes. The draft offers no route to apply for a permit retroactively in those zones.
The draft also rewrites the penalty for water-saving facilities. The current law orders projects whose water-saving facilities were not built or do not meet national requirements but were put into use anyway to stop using them, correct the problem within a deadline, and pay 50,000 to 100,000 yuan.
Under the draft, water-saving facilities that were not designed, built and put into operation at the same time as the main project, or that fail to meet national requirements and are put into use anyway would face a fine of 20,000 to 200,000 yuan and an order to correct the problem within a deadline. Failure to correct it in time would bring a fine of 200,000 to 2 million yuan, along with restricted water supply or revocation of the withdrawal permit.
The draft adds a new offence the current law does not cover: water-saving facilities that are not operating normally. Violators would be ordered to correct the problem and fined up to 20,000 yuan, rising to 20,000 to 200,000 yuan plus restricted supply or revoked permits if the deadline is missed.
China's Water Law was enacted in 1988 and substantially revised in 2002, with individual clauses amended in 2009 and 2016.
