Discussion On The Implementation Of The Legal Institution Of Environmental Emergency Response

After the Industrial Revolution, as the ability of human beings to change thenatural environment heightening, environmental emergency tends to come over morefrequently than before. And it is a great threaten to health and welfare of all of people.The government must take the most part of responsibility to cope the environmentalproblems. To this respect, many countries in the world have built legal institution ofenvironmental emergency response. So the legislation secures the procedure ofenvironmental emergency response to be a normal legal institution. Since the end oflast century, our country began to pay attention to emergency and promulgatelegislation related. China has already formulated Emergency Response Act of China,on which our country launched many kinds of regulations, rules, bylaws and so forthbased. And many provinces and cities stipulated their own plan of environmentalemergency response.However, in fact, the implementation of legal institution of environmentalemergency response underplays. In April11th,2014, a water pollution incidentoccurred in Lanzhou, Gansu Province. But the conduct in this incident has beendoubted by the populace. It is necessary to examine the management in Lanzhou tofind out the problems hiding in our environmental emergency response and the reasonwhy it has a poor practical effect. With review on the incident, we could find that thepollution attributes to two former pollution oil leakage. And when the pollutionobserved, the accident unit didn’t stop the water supply. Several hours past, whenthey report the message to the executives, either. After the government departmentsgot the report, they didn’t report to Lanzhou government and other bodies aslegislation provided. Many aspects of the procedure of coping with the waterpollution which Lanzhou government adopted didn’t comply with the relativelegislation and also the plan mentioned. To a large extent, the government overlookedthe environmental right of citizens, particularly environmental participating right andenvironmental information informed right. And this behavior led to public panicwater buying. After the whole accident, no indemnity is payed to the injured by the accident unit, and only the government disciplined several officers opaquely.The reason that the implementation of legal institution of environmentalemergency has a bad effect partly is the legislative problem. In4.11Lanzhou waterpollution response, the legislation which Lanzhou government must follow would be:Emergency Response Act of China, Regulations of Emergency Response of GansuProvince, Plan of Environmental Emergency Response of Gansu Province, Plan ofEnvironmental Emergency Response of Lanzhou, Plan of Water Supply EmergencyResponse of Lanzhou. To a large extent, Regulations of Emergency Response ofGansu Province copies Emergency Response Act. Thus it has little local feature and islack in operability. And the problems in Emergency Response Act remain in theregulations in Gansu. Most of all, Emergency Response Act doesn’t realize theparticularity of environmental issues. And no clause is specified to regulateenvironmental emergency. Thus environmental emergency response doesn’t need tocomply with the principles of environmental law. The problems in the plan of Gansureflect the general problems in the plan of environmental emergency response in ourcountry. As the law stipulated no punishment to violation of the plans, thegovernment tends to overlook the plans and take some other measures. And the plansof environmental emergency response have little content to provide informationdisclosure and public participation. They don’t see the disposal either.After all, I suggest to formulate specialized environmental emergency response act,which must comply with the principles of environmental law. The legislation will betargeted to focus on environmental problems. And we must amend our existing laws,and enhance their operability. Based on the principles of environmental law,information disclosure and public participation concepts would be deepen in thelegislation.