Last week, someone found an 80m deep cave in Yongshun, Hunan province, full of garbage. The mountain of mainly domestic waste at the bottom of the cave was about 30m wide and 15m high, Zonglan News quoted the whistleblower as saying.
China has experienced a slew of similar cases recently. In response, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) has launched a “special rectification campaign against illegal dumping and disposal of solid waste”, reports Xinhua News Agency.
Spokesperson Pei Xiaofei said the MEE will use satellite remote sensing and drones to inspect uninhabited areas, administrative borderlands, and ecologically sensitive areas like karst caves, nature reserves and forest land.
People can report signs of illegal dumping through a dedicated phone line or by email, the MEE announced this week.
The ministry says its focus includes “hazardous waste, industrial solid waste, construction waste, scrapped motor vehicles, electronic products, retired new energy equipment and batteries”.
Last month, sewage began overflowing from a 150m deep cave in Cili, Hunan province. It was full of livestock manure and domestic garbage. Local officials told Xinhuanet that 51 tonnes of garbage had been cleared, but due to the complex structure of the karst cave, it was unclear how much there was in total. The local government checked 206 karst caves, and only about one-third were free from garbage pollution.
Guangming.com reported that karst caves are strongly connected to the groundwater system, meaning pollutants can spread easily. The safety of local residents’ water may be affected as well as the ecological environment, the outlet added.
Pei Xiaofei said the MEE expects it to take about three years to rectify the solid-waste dumping problem across the country.
Read Dialogue Earth’s previous analysis of the weakest links in China’s waste-management loop, or our report on cave biodiversity in Yunnan.