China to spend $250 mln on pollution checks

BEIJING (Reuters) - China will pour 2 billion yuan ($250 million) into measuring pollution and enforcing controls as it struggles to stem toxic emissions from its feverish industrial growth, state media reported on Saturday.

China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) will use the money to figure out just how much pollution factories and other producers release and then hold them to targets for cutting emissions, the China Daily reported.

China has promised to cut major pollution emissions by 10 percent between 2006 and 2010, but last year the country failed to meet the annual target, SEPA officials have said.

At a meeting this week, Zhou told officials that strengthened monitoring would keep factories and officials under pressure to ensure they meet the reduction goal.

"A strict system for checking emissions reductions means strengthening the responsibility of government, a rigorous system for releasing data, and a system for pursuing culpability, and accepting the scrutiny of society and the public," Zhou said, according to a report on SEPA's Web site (www.sepa.gov.cn).

China is the world's largest emitter of acid rain-causing sulphur dioxide and by 2009 may pass the United States as the top emitter of carbon dioxide -- the chief human-generated greenhouse gas behind global warming.

In 2006, China's sulphur dioxide output reached 25.9 million tonnes, an increase of 1.8 percent on the previous year, SEPA has estimated. But the country's rickety monitoring system is vulnerable to distortion and meddling by growth-hungry officials.

Zhou said the 2 billion yuan allocation from the central government would "thoroughly transform the weak state of pollution source monitoring, environmental law enforcement and statistical capacity."

The money would help establish automated monitoring and allow more on-the-spot checks, he said.