For a long time, many places in Guangdong Province use desalinated marine sand. The Department of Natural Resources of Guangdong Province sells 60 million to 70 million cubic meters of marine sand every year, but it is far from meeting the market demand. In recent years, the infrastructure construction in Guangdong Province has continued to be high, the demand for construction sand is strong, and the contradiction between supply and demand is prominent, which leads to the frequent illegal use of marine sand, in particular, marine sand was unqualified or even non-desalinated, causing serious hidden dangers to infrastructure, housing construction and other projects in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area! In the case of illegal use of marine sand in 2013, all suspected projects were ordered to suspend construction.

Recently, the Guangdong Provincial Department of Ecology and Environment issued the "Guangdong Province Marine Sand Foaming Management Measures (Draft for Comment)" (hereinafter referred to as the “Management Measures"), proposing:

◆ In order to strengthen the management of sand washing industry in Guangdong Province, strictly crack down on illegal washing of marine sand in seawater channels and rivers. It is prohibited to engage in activities that damage ecology and pollute the environment, such as soaking and washing marine sand in seawater channels and rivers.

◆ The people's governments of the coastal prefecture-level and above municipalities in this province shall reasonably designate and set up onshore marine sand desalination sites, and the people's governments of other prefecture-level and above municipalities shall reasonably set up land-based sand washing sites in light of their actual needs. The land-based marine sand desalination plant shall, in accordance with the provisions of the national water abstraction permit system and the water resource paid use system, apply for a water abstraction permit in accordance with the law, and use water in accordance with the approved water use plan. Land-based marine sand desalination plants should implement ledger management, strengthen the source supervision of incoming and outgoing sand and gravel, and sand washing should meet national, local and industry standards.

◆ In accordance with the principle of residence management, the government carries out joint actions with other relevant departments to administrate local sand washing. All departments shall crack down on illegal activities of soaking and washing marine sand in sea and river waters in accordance with the law. Those suspected of breaking the law and crimes shall be transferred to judicial organs in accordance with regulations.

◆ Any enterprise or individual has the right to complain and report environmental pollution activities such as washing sand and mud in sea and rivers.

The problem of illegally soaking and washing marine sand in some areas of Guangdong is highly valued by the central government!

In October 2021, the second round of the fourth batch of the central ecological and environmental protection inspection team has verified a number of outstanding ecological and environmental problems. Four typical cases were exposed by the fourth central ecological and environmental protection inspection team. After the Central Environmental Protection Inspector's report, 10 departments in Guangdong jointly set up a task force to strictly investigate the marine sand problem.

A few days ago, the Guangdong Provincial Department of Housing and Urban-Rural Development issued the "Notice on Carrying out Special Actions on Strengthening the Quality Management of Sand and Concrete for Housing and Municipal Engineering", requesting to strengthen the management of marine sand mining, transportation, sales, and use; strengthening construction sand and gravel and ready-mixed concrete quality management; focus on inspection of chloride ion testing; competent departments across the province shall immediately instruct relevant projects to suspend work for rectification and relevant production enterprises to suspend operations for rectification if the chloride ion content of ready-mixed concrete and ready-mixed mortar is found to exceed the specified value during the inspection.