The cadmium polluting the Longjiang River in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region has highlighted the issue of who should pay for pollution cleanups and the damage they cause to the environment.

Since 2009 there have been more than 30 serious incidents of heavy metal pollution by chemical, photovoltaic, pharmaceutical and IT companies in about 10 provinces.

The affected areas, mostly in East China, are densely populated and the pollution will cause long-term harm to both the environment and public health.

It is common sense that the party responsible for the pollution, usually the companies that discharge the pollutants, rather than public money should pay the cleanup costs and any compensation.

However, at present, enterprises pay a sewage charge in China to cover any environmental damage and it is usually public finance that pays for any cleanup.

But these sewage charges are much lower than the costs of any pollution incident, and more importantly, they do not deter polluters from discharging pollutants again.

The incidents in the past prove that the authorities at various levels are easily duped by enterprises' well-planned reports on their waste discharge. In most cases, local authorities do not deal with the pollution until local media report damage to people's health and the environment.

In the 1970s, German enterprises started sending their industrial waste to be treated and recycled by companies specially licensed by the authorities to do the job. All kinds of wastewater, gas and residue are strictly classified. The discharge and treatment processes of any kind of waste are both clearly priced and monitored.

The ingrained belief that polluters should pay the bills and it is dauntingly costly to discharge pollutants not only forces the enterprises to consistently adopt new cleaner technologies, but also promotes the development of a green economy.

The environmental costs should be measured while calculating local economic growth and become an important indicator to evaluate the performance of local authorities to strengthen necessary supervision and administration.

(China Daily 02/06/2012 page8)