By / Reporters of The Beijing News: Liu Min, Chen Jie

Original Chinese news article:

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/LfA3Fh83VNi-f9l16Znfew

The rainy season in Qingzhen begins in April every year and lasts until September, which is also the most panic-stricken half year for the 1, 2 and 3 groups of villagers in Zhongzhai. Villager Wang Guang said.

Two ground collapse pits in Zhongzhai. The total number of collapse caves in 2017 is 34, and the collapse situation in the past two years is still in the statistics.

in Ronghe Village (Zhanjie Town, Qingzhen City, Guizhou Province), three groups (group 1, 2 and 3) of villagers, 135 people in total, are living in the fear of collapse which could happen at any time under their feet. Mining in Maiba mine area of bauxite mine of Zhongbao Guizhou Branch, located 50 meters away from Zhongzhai, has caused road and farmland subsidence, water shortage of cultivation, and a large number of broken housing foundations.

According to the villagers, this situation stems from the mine's failure to execute the EIA (Environmental impact assessment) approval, which required enterprises to relocate villagers before construction. However, the mining side has its own explanations.

Over the past decade, conflicts between the two sides happen continuously. The lawsuit of liability for tort, which was represented by 10 villagers, had eventually upgraded to the first environmental public interest litigation for geological disasters caused by mining in China, of which the plaintiff is a non-profit organization and the third party is Zhanjie Town Government.

The case was accepted by the ecological protection court of Qingzhen People's Court, which is the first environmental protection court in China. Its emphasis is whether group 1, 2 and 3 of Zhongzhai should be integrally relocated. After the first trial, the plaintiff and defendant both appealed. Now it is waiting for the judgment of the second instance of Guiyang Intermediate People's Court.

Problems in 109 houses

Ronghe Village Zhongzhai Group 1, Group 2 and Group 3 houses are located on the gully slope and roadsides of the east side of the main shaft in Maiba mining area of bauxite mine of Guizhou Branch of China Aluminum Corporation, with a slope of 10-30 degrees. This is a pure Miao village belonging to a branch of the Miao nationality, Siyin Miao. There are 135 villagers, whose income is mainly farming, short-term work, and family handicraft industry.

The foot of the village is a mine. The construction of Longtan bank section in Maiba mining area began in July 2007, which adopts the underground blasting mining method, that is, digging the main shaft from underground first and then production roadways, drilling, placing detonators and explosive, before blasting to mine the seam. The villagers still remember that around 2010, noises of cannons and steel brazing under their feet could be heard, and the glass windows in Zhongzhai Primary School, which located in the center of Zhongzhai, shaken constantly. In the past two years, however, sounds of cannons have gradually faded away in the underground tunnels, the length of which is several kilometers.

In the south of the village, there is an uneven maize field of about 300 mu (20k㎡), and the remediation marks are obvious. Huang Youzhong, a staff member of the mass workstation of the Zhanjie Town Government, told reporters that the spring flowed naturally in the village in the past, so all the cultivated lands were paddy fields, on which planted rice. Now the water has already leaked out, and the lands can only be planted by rainwater, and the paddy fields have been converted into dry lands.

Huang Youzhong remembers that one day in April 2013, he saw people more than a dozen meters away transplanting rice seedlings. Suddenly the water in the paddy field disappeared. He shouted and warned the seedling transplanter to run away. Before his words were finished, the paddy field collapsed into a pit of 56 meters in diameter.

Wang Chaohong, a villager, said that he had seen a buffalo abruptly falling into the farmland in 2015. "Its belly was stuck at the edge of the pit and all the feet sank. Several men dragged the cattle up."

Villagers are preparing plows for farmland. Some villagers saw buffalo suddenly sinking into the farmland and "several men dragged the cattle up".

Not only did the farmland sink, but the ground of the village is collapsing. The Geological and Technical Judicial Appraisal Institute of Guizhou Geotechnical?investigation Academy have visited Zhongzhai more than once. Its investigation report shows that 17 ground subsidence pits have appeared in groups 1, 2 and 3 of Zhongzhai in 2012, and 7 new were added in May 2014. In August 2017, the geological team 115 of Guizhou Geological Survey and Development Bureau were commissioned by Qingzhen City Court to investigate again, when 9 new ground collapse pits were found. They numbered all the 34 collapse sites, including 4 collapsed villagers' houses.

In Zhongzhai farmland, the four collapse pits are not far apart. The largest diameter is about 20 meters and the deepest depth is 3 meters.

A circular hole, 35 centimeters in diameter and 35 centimeters in depth, is in front of Peng Fangyuan's bed, which was covered by a three-ply board. Peng Fangyuan told the journalist that the whole first suddenly emerged in 2014. He filled it with soil before it collapsed again three months later. In 2016, around pit appeared again, located at the corner of his bullpen, which is 6 square meters in size and 4 centimeters in depth.

The ground of Peng Fangyuan's house collapsed. It is a round hole, 35 cm in diameter and 35 cm in depth. Peng Fangyuan told the journalist that the whole first appeared in 2014, once filled with soil, before it collapsed again three months later.

In 2015, a 10-meter-by-12-meter round pit, 2 meters in depth, appeared 5 meters behind Yang Chaolin’s house.

In June 2016, a pit appeared in the living room of Wang Chaoxiong’s house, which is about 2㎡in size

Villagers also found a fractured geographic line in the village, which started from the main shaft of the mine and passed through the center of the village from west to east. The houses on the south side of the line will sink, while the houses on the north side will slide. Damaged houses with broken foundations and collapsed cracks in groups 1, 2 and 3 of Zhongzhai houses are located along both sides of this fracture line.

(To be continued.)

News article translated by / Jia Yueran Modified by / Niu Jingmei