A Contingency Plan for Heavy Air Pollution was released by the Environmental Protection Department of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region recently, in addition to the establishments of a heavy air pollution emergency headquarters and an emergency response mechanism, in order to improve the region’s ability in the prevention, alerting and handling of heavy air pollution weather.

The contingency plan has set up three levels of alerts: Ⅲ, Ⅱ andⅠ, colored yellow, orange and red respectively.

When three or more neighboring prefectures and cities are forecast to be suffering for three or more consecutive days from severe air pollution, a yellow or level Ⅲ alert will be launched in the region; the affected areas will be notified through newspapers, radio, television and telecommunications.

Levels Ⅱ and Ⅰ require corresponding units to be on standby around the clock. The environmental protection and meteorological departments at all levels should forecast the possible time, location, scale, density and route of heavy air pollution.

The response measures in the contingency plan were subdivided into preventive measures, suggested emission reduction measures and obligatory emission reduction measures.

In addition to giving advice to the public, the plan has laid out specific requirements to governments and pollution enterprises in regards to energy-saving and emission reductions.

The emergency headquarters is responsible for daily inspection of its members’ own contingency plans and emergency mechanism construction, as well as actions while the alert is in action. Any poor performance could be met with punishment.