This early spring, there were 3 pieces of good news for Yuan’an County. Yuan’an has been entitled as National Garden County, selected as “National Tourism Demonstration Zone”, and approved of an ecological county (district) at the provincial level. Thus Yuan’an has become the first county passing this assessment-and-acceptance procedure in Yichang City.

With the implementation of ecological construction in Hubei Province, Yuan’an has quickly launched the work of building itself into an ecological county. While it strengthens the development of leading industries such as phosphorus chemical industry, new building materials industry, and foods and pharmaceuticals industry, Yuan’an also steps up the efforts to develop the new energy industry, energy-saving and environment-protecting industry and other strategic emerging industries, and resolutely shut down those projects and enterprises that had small scale and heavy pollution and did not conform to the green development strategy. Since last year, over 20 industrial enterprises have finished the energy-saving transformation projects; 7 enterprises have been eliminated due to their backward output capacity; nearly 70 small coal mines have been closed or merged with others; and nearly 40 completed projects have dealt with the emission reduction and control.   

In addition to supporting the low-carbon industrial development, the process of harmless disposal of agricultural production and ecologicalization of tourism development has also been promoted vigorously. Taking full use of its ecological advantages, Yuan’an has popularized the new agricultural technologies such as pollution-free cultivation, green prevention and control, soil testing and formulated fertilization, clean implanting and breeding and so on, developed 27 harmless, green and organic agricultural products with geographical marks and succeeded in building itself into a “National Quality and Safety Demonstration Zone for Edible Fungus Export”. Meanwhile, following the tourism standards of 5A scenic spots, Yuan’an also worked hard to fulfill the whole-area tourism pattern, with scenic spots and beautiful landscapes covering the whole county. In 2015, Yuan’an received 4,086,000 tourists and gained the comprehensive revenue of 2.87 billion Yuan, with an increase of 61% and 62% respectively.

With the aim of constructing a “beautiful Yuan’an”, Yuan’an has implemented “5 projects”. The environment purification project created a long-term mechanism for trash disposal, achieved 100% harmless disposal of all household wastes in the county. The landscaping project increased a green area of 28.4 hectares in Fengming downtown, and Yuan’an now covers an afforestation area of 28 thousand mu. The water-saving and water-cleaning project promoted the decentralized waste water disposal patterns, namely, constructing man-made wetlands, macro-power processing, biogas engineering and so on, which helped the qualified rate of drinking water hygiene in rural areas reach 100%. The ecological cell project enables Yuan’an to have 7 ecological towns, 27 ecological villages, 4 green communities of the city level; 1 ecological tourism demonstration zone and 2 green schools at the provincial level. The rural management project has strongly promoted the comprehensive treatment of rural environment, and in 2015, 1,500 families were able to use clean energy, and the popularizing rate of sanitary toilet in rural areas has reached 95%. (Reporter: Wang Liqing; Correspondent: Cao Dengfeng and Tu Xianguo)