AFTER working with the water division of the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau for years, Qu Jining clearly understands all the tricks local companies use to evade the government's inspections.

　　"Since what we test during the inspection is the density of pollutants in the waste water they discharge, some factories just turn on the taps to dilute their waste when they see us coming," Qu said.

　　"This can be enough to let them escape a fine, but the amount of pollution is not reduced - and a lot of clean water is wasted."

　　Most inspections are conducted during the day time, so many companies choose to discharge their waste water during the night. The darkness also helps them to avoid being caught by people living nearby who might report their acts to the government.

　　If they discharge their waste water into a large river, it takes quite a long time before the pollution becomes obvious.

　　Due to a lack of labour and money, the inspections on these enterprises are only conducted every three months. Some factories simply adopt two sets of standards for their waste water, one for the inspection team and the other for their normal operations.

　　Currently the bureau is co-operating with Shanghai Tongji University to conduct a detailed inspection of all the 9,000-odd enterprises scattered around the city, to try to find out the real situation concerning their waste disposal.

　　There is a rule in Shanghai stipulating that all industrial factories must reach the proper environment standard before they receive a business licence.

　　For large factories, this means installing facilities and treating their waste themselves before discharging it into rivers.

　　For smaller factories, waste can be discharged into the city's pipes and then a payment made for professional water treatment plants to handle it.

　　Yet due to the low capacity of these plants, the total treatment rate, based on last year's statistics, was only 31 per cent. The rest is pumped into the sea after minimal treatment, such as removal of sediment and floating rubbish.

　　"This is not a healthy practice. It has already worsened the situation of the ocean red tides, with more harmful algal blooms being found in the East China Sea in recent years," said Xia Siqing, a professor at Tongji University's Environmental Science and Engineering School.

　　Impotent penalty

　　The Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau requires factories which yield over 1,000 tons of waste water every day to treat it themselves, so as to reduce the pressure on the water treatment plants, which still have to clean over 3 million tons of domestic sewage every day.

　　However, some secret inspections have already revealed that many companies just by-pass their own waste-treatment facilities and discharge the sewage directly into rivers to save money. Many illegal enterprises don't even bother installing the facilities in the first place.

　　"Further detailed inspections will no doubt find a lot more of this sort of thing," Xia said, quite confidently.

　　Yet even when enterprises are caught discharging sub-standard waste water, it is not such a big deal.

　　The highest fine allowed by the newly issued implementation rules on water protection is only 200,000 yuan (US,096). Prison terms are not imposed as punishments for environmental crimes.

　　Qu remembered how, not long ago, the bureau demanded an irresponsible company, which had repeatedly discharged waste water directly into rivers, be fined 300,000 yuan (US,144).

　　"We had even thought of fining the company a million yuan (US,000) based on its acts," Qu said.

　　"However, the boss said - correctly - we had breached the upper penalty-limit set by the law. Finally we managed to get him to pay the amount we wanted by using the principle of cumulative punishment for multiple crimes."

　　The case left a great impression on all the environmental staff involved in it.

　　The implementation rules say in the case of those pollution acts which cause huge economic losses, fines equal to 30 per cent of the damage they cause can be imposed, but the upper limit is 1 million yuan (US,000).

　　"Since the law itself is unclear, it was previously assumed the so called 'huge economic losses' should amount to at least 10 million yuan (US.2 million)," she said.

　　"The fines don't even match the costs of installing the required waste treatment facilities."

　　A medium-sized industrial factory, producing around 3,000 tons of waste water every day, has to spend at least 6 million yuan (US,000) on treatment facilities, in addition to the costs incurred by running the equipment, such as electricity charges and the salaries paid to the workers in charge of them.

　　"So when the treatment facilities become too old or break down for some other reason, companies are often tempted just to leave them idle. They would rather pay the occasional fines than invest in new waste treatment facilities, since the latter turn out to be much more expensive," she said.

　　Vicious circle

　　Even given these problems, industrial waste is still something the bureau finds comparatively easy to cope with, as polluters can at least be caught and punished. A far more difficult problem facing the environment bureau is that of agricultural waste.

　　The chemical fertilizers used to grow abundant crops filter through the soil into underground rivers, and when the rain falls, the chemicals are flushed into drainage ditches and rivers.

　　"This has already caused great pollution to the rivers," Qu said.

　　"Yet setting up ecological towns for green agriculture needs large investments.

　　"Although the city's agricultural commission has issued some regulations to limit the use of fertilizers, the steps are too slow and the peasants have very little awareness of this issue."

　　Livestock farms are another tough problem.

　　Statistics show there are 194 livestock farms in the countryside near the upper reaches of the Huangpu River - the source for the city's drinking water.

　　Many of the livestock farms, due to their small scale, don't have any waste treatment facilities. The 500,000 mu (33,333 hectare) area of the city's countryside can't absorb all the manure, so a large part is just discharged directly into the rivers.

　　It is said the waste produced by a pig is five times greater than that of a man.

　　The city is thinking of relocating more farms to neighbouring provinces, and at the same time setting up several large scale manure treatment plants for the remaining farms.

　　"The many industrial development restrictions set up in those areas near the drinking water sources, have led these places to be the poorest in Shanghai," Qu said.

　　"The city doesn't have enough money to fully subsidize the people there, so it is really hard for us to insist on another round of strict regulations, this time regarding their agricultural activities."

　　But the pollution at issue is a huge concern. The city has a total of 971 livestock farms, and the amount of manure produced by these farms amounts to 7 million tons every year.