Hebei Re-opens Public Consultation on Interim Measures for Total Discharge Management of Key Pollutants from Construction Projects

On October 22, the Hebei Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment issued a letter reopening public consultation on the Interim Measures for the Total Discharge Management of Key Pollutants from Construction Projects in Hebei Province. The draft was revised after a first consultation round in 2025 and in light of the Ecological and Environmental Code of the People's Republic of China. Feedback is accepted until November 22, 2026.

• Controlled pollutants: new emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammonia nitrogen, total phosphorus, lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium and arsenic are subject to categorized total discharge control.
• Wastewater scope: except for centralized municipal wastewater treatment facilities, park wastewater treatment plants, rural domestic sewage facilities, and projects discharging only domestic sewage or indirect cooling water, projects that directly or indirectly discharge production wastewater (excluding rainwater) must control new COD, ammonia nitrogen and total phosphorus.
• Heavy-metal sectors: six industries — non-ferrous metal mining and beneficiation, non-ferrous smelting, lead-acid battery manufacturing, electroplating, certain chemical raw material and product manufacturing, and leather tanning — must control new lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium and arsenic.
• Replacement ratios: regions and river basins meeting national or local environmental quality standards apply equal-amount replacement; those failing to meet them apply double-amount replacement.
• Emission trading: new key pollutant discharges included in the provincial emission trading scheme must be acquired through trading.

The measures also set EIA preparation and approval requirements: projects emitting key pollutants must fully account for total emissions in their EIA documents and, before approval, complete emission trading and submit a reduction-replacement plan specifying the source of reductions, the measures and the corresponding quantities. The reduction measures must be implementable, verifiable and assessable.

For the industrial water treatment sector, the draft means that new, rebuilt and expanded projects discharging production wastewater in Hebei must secure their water pollutant discharge quotas through emission trading before EIA approval, while park wastewater treatment plants and centralized municipal facilities are excluded from wastewater total-load control — a framework that further encourages centralized treatment of industrial wastewater within parks and segregated pretreatment at source.