HONG KONG, Aug. 1 (Kyodo) — Following last weekend's mass protest over a planned waste water pipeline from a Japanese paper company's plant in eastern China, residents near the plant are threatening a protest to force the plant's closure, a Hong Kong newspaper reported Wednesday.
The South China Morning Post said residents in Nantong city, where the plant belonging to Oji Paper Co. is located, are threatening to stage a fresh protest to force the closure of the plant, which cost about $2 billion and is the largest single Japanese investment in China according to Oji Paper's website.
Around 5,000 people took part in the demonstration over the weekend, with residents expressing health concerns about the project to lay a 100-kilometer pipeline to discharge waste from the inland plant into the sea. Authorities in the city announced that the project would be "permanently cancelled."
Local resident Dai Baojian was quoted in the report as saying that the government failed to inform the people what will happen to waste water discharge without the drainpipe.
"The factory's sewage does not only affect people in Nantong, but the whole (Yangtze River delta)," Lu Zhenping, another Nantong resident, was quoted as saying.
The factory started operations in January with around 850 employees. It primarily produces printing paper with an annual capacity of 400,000 tons.
Oji Paper was planning to raise the capacity eventually to 1.2 million tons but the recent economic slowdown has forced it to use only 70 to 80 percent of capacity.
Waste water from the factory is currently discharged into the Yangtze River after being purified to meet Chinese standards. Oji Paper was planning to discharge waste water into the sea through the pipeline which was to have been built by Nantong city.