(Yicai Global) Feb. 22 -- China’s environmental protection regulator has placed 44,000 companies on a new positive list, pledging not to interfere with their normal operations, as part of a slew of new measures rolled out by the watchdog to improve its supervision and enforcement practices.

The Ministry of Ecology and Environment introduced a positive list system for supervision and enforcement last year, ministry spokesman Liu Youbin said today. And its random review rate of businesses has eased significantly, slumping 16.1 percent from the year before to 509,900 companies.

Last year, the Ministry exposed several typical cases of environmental damage that cause serious pollution, harm the health of the public and have bad influences, Liu said. Departments at all levels issued 91,000 administrative penalties and CNY7.7 billion (USD1.1 billion) of fines, and dealt with 9,850 cases of violating laws and regulations.

Many departments continue to optimize their enforcement methods and the efficiency of the enforcement.

In terms of water ecology and environment, China still faces many bottlenecks and challenges such as cyanobacterial blooms and water ecological imbalance, said Huang Xiaozeng, director of the Ministry’s department of water ecology and environment.

This year, the department will integrate the management of water resources, environment and ecology as well as tackle outstanding water environmental problems and other areas that are lagging, Huang said.

It will strengthen the management of phosphorus pollution in the Yangtze River basin, improve water pollution controls at industrial parks in the Yangtze River economic belt and the Yellow River basin, and guide the first 19 pilot cities to promote the recycling of water, he said.

The department will also issue river and sea discharge pollution supervision and management measures with supporting technical specifications, as well as revise the water pollution discharge standards in the chemical, printing, dyeing, and electroplating industries, to make up for shortcomings in national discharge standards.

Editors: Shi Yi, Kim Taylor