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 Choking smog blankets many Chinese cities, and environmental
degradation, the cost of the country's breakneck economic growth,
has earned the ire of an increasingly educated and affluent urban
class.
For more than two weeks, thousands of people have protested against
the construction in the Yuhang district of Hangzhou, a protester, Wu
Yunfeng, told Reuters by telephone, adding that authorities had
started work without the consent of residents.
The plant will be the largest of its kind in Asia, the U.S.-based
Radio Free Asia service said this week, quoting a resident as saying
the incinerator would handle 3,000 metric tons of garbage daily in
its initial phase, rising to 8,000 tons later.
Chinese social media websites showed photographs of a gathering of
hundreds of protesters watching a man with a loudspeaker. Other
images sent to Reuters by Wu showed dozens of marchers wrapped in
Chinese flags.
Government officials in Hangzhou, a tourist attraction best known in
China for its lake, said they were not familiar with the protests.
But waste incineration technology "is now very mature", the Hangzhou
Daily newspaper quoted Zhao Guangjie, chief designer of the new
energy engineering program for China United Engineering Corporation,
as saying.
Zhao, who was invited to speak to the media, cited design standards
adopted by Singapore and Kuwait, the newspaper said.
"After the news came out, many people asked me whether it was safe
or not," the report quoted Chen Yong, head of the government-run
Chinese Academy of Engineering, as saying.
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"I would start by asking them what type of standards do you have for
construction?" he said. "If the waste incineration plant is going to
be spewing stinking air everyday, then I definitely don't agree.
"But if it is built in a 'garden-style', not only would I not oppose
it, I'll even help publicize it," he said, without elaborating on
the difference.
Hangzhou, capital of prosperous Zhejiang province, has seen its
luster dimmed in recent years by a recurrent smog problem.
Late in March, hundreds of residents of the southern town of Maoming
staged protests against plans to build a petrochemical plant there,
for fear it would contribute to pollution. [ID:nL4N0MU27N]
(Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee and Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Clarence
Fernandez)
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