A Study Of The Legal Issues On The Groundwater Pollution Prevention And Control Of China

The prevention and control of groundwater pollution is involved in the legal issues such as criminal liability,administrative enforcement of law and civil relief.Performing a research on the legal issues of the control of groundwater pollution is of great significance to safeguard people's drinking water safety and protect groundwater resources.In order to strengthen the protection for groundwater,the People's Republic of China,short as PRC has formulated a series of laws and regulations,which has basically achieved the goal that there are laws to abide by the groundwater protection.Despite that fact that PRC has issued a series of laws and regulations on the prevention and control of groundwater pollution,the current situation of the groundwater remains severe.There are still a number of legal issues on the prevention and control of groundwater pollution in China that criminal sanction is not strong enough,effectiveness of administrative enforcement of law is far from satisfactory,and legal procedure of the civil tort action is defective.Specifically speaking,included are the unreasonable regulations of punishment against freedom and relatively light punishment on pecuniary penalty,ineffective performance of duties from certain competent departments of environmental protection and weak punishment measures of environmental administrative enforcement of law,and insufficient participation of social organizations and the public in civil environmental public interest litigation as well.Therefore,it is suggested that the following three aspects be fulfilled to improve the effectiveness of the prevention and control of groundwater pollution of PRC that firstly,the criminal penalty allocation against the environmental pollution crimes shall be further enhanced;secondly,the effectiveness of environmental administrative enforcement of law shall be strengthened and thirdly,legal procedure of the civil tort action shall be optimized.More precisely,included are the following respects that both the punishment against freedom and the punishment on pecuniary penalty shall be sterner;the supervision toward people's governments at all levels shall be strengthened and the measures for the environmental administrative enforcement of law shall be tightened;and both the participation of social organizations and the public participation in environmental civil public interest litigation shall be further improved.