On April 14, news came from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment that it had unveiled the list of the top 20 and the bottom 20 cities of the national air quality ranking of 168 major cities. Xianning City is the 13th in this ranking, the only city of Hubei Province being selected into “the 20 cities with relatively good air quality”.

As of Mar 31st, there have been 90 air quality effective monitoring days in Xianning downtown areas, which have witnessed 19 days with excellent air quality, 51 days with good air quality, 16 lightly polluted days and 4 moderately polluted days, the days with good air quality accounting for 77.8 %. Plus, the average PM10 density was 64μg/m3, staying unchanged compared to that of last year, and ranking the 2nd in the whole province. Meanwhile the average density of fine particulate matter PM2.5 was 54μg/m3, ranking the third in the whole province.

The analyst believes that it was by no accident that things have kept looking up in the air quality of Xianning City. In recent years, Xianning City has exerted unwavering efforts to implement the Great Yangtze River Protection Strategy in their work. Determining to build a “green heart” in Central China and develop itself into an international ecological city, it has made constant efforts to perfect the five major mechanisms relating to pollution prevention and control management, check and compensation, inspection and accountability, forecast and warning, regional coordination and cooperation. To gain a total victory in the Blue Sky Protection Campaign with a strong resolution, special rectifications has been launched to manage the non-coal mines, urban dust pollution, motor vehicle exhaust and industrial pollution, which has reduced the air contamination from the source.

In the meantime, Xianning City has taken further steps to improve the comprehensive control and long-term management mechanism for air pollution, make incessant efforts to build a grass-roots environment monitoring network, and improve the inspection methods, coming up with a portfolio strategy targeting at the comprehensive control of air pollution.

A responsible person of Xianning Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment said that they will keep on controlling air pollution with a rod of iron and preventing haze with scientific methods, and take effective measures to improve the ambient air quality, so as to strengthen the sense of happiness towards the blue sky of the general public. In 2019, Xianning City will spare no effort to realize the goal of first entering the “cities reaching the grade 2 air quality standard” among the 13 prefecture-level cities of Hubei Province. (By Zhu Zhe/Xianning Daily)