The General Office of the Ministry of Environmental Protection ("MEP") has recently issued four national standards for environmental protection, including the Technical Guidelines on Drafting and Revising Water Pollutant Discharge Standards for Industries (Draft for Comment) (the "Draft for Comment") to solicit comments from the units concerned by December 29, 2017.
The Draft for Comment provides for the setup and classification of water pollutant discharge standards, basic principles to draw up water pollutant discharge standards for industries, general structure of standard texts and requirements on their compilation, work procedures and technical procedures, main work content and applicable methods to draw up these standards, major content of the instructions explaining how these standards are drafted, major content of the technical research reports, etc. According to the Draft for Comment, the water pollutant discharge standards for industries will set out respective requirements on the control of distinctive water pollutants discharged from existing pollution sources and newly established pollution sources, and the limits on the pollutants discharged from new sources shall be stricter than those on existing sources in general. As to water pollutant discharge standards that are in place at present, the revised version thereof will not again provide for the control over pollutants discharged from existing pollution sources, and solely specify the time limits by which existing pollution sources are required to meet requirements applicable to the control over pollutants from newly established sources.