Since 2021, Handan City has made dust control a key measure to improve air quality, deploying efforts across multiple fronts. The city has successively held on-site observation meetings and negative example meetings for dust control, fostering role models and setting examples to further strengthen the responsibilities of local governments, industry supervision, and property owners in dust control. Departments such as the Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, Construction Department, Urban Management Bureau, and Transportation Department have all established special teams for dust control and have been continuously launching targeted campaigns to combat dust pollution.
Handan City, on the basis of strictly implementing the "Eight Standards" for dust control on construction sites, has implemented a three-color differentiated supervision system of "green, yellow, red," and dynamically adjusts it. For market entities that fail to manage effectively, they are included in the "blacklist" of construction industry credit information and publicly announced, guiding entities to自觉 fulfill their responsibilities in dust prevention and control. In particular, for the main openings of construction projects, such as openings and windows, which are prone to generate high-altitude dust sources, all are sealed with high-count, airtight nets to reduce the dispersal of floating dust.
City roads strictly implement the "Double Five Double Ten" and "Six Clean and Six Free" standards. Major and secondary roads are cleaned with "two flushes every two days, three sweeping and two sprinklings every day," while branch roads and alleys are cleaned with "two flushes every week and two sweeping every day." Sidewalk trees are flushed weekly, and mechanical cleaning and maintenance reach 100%. Additionally, manual cleaning assistance is provided for areas that are difficult to reach by machines, such as the roots of curbs.
For national and provincial trunk roads, the city has implemented a "three-in-one" operation three times a day at the main urban entrance and exit, as well as along key trunk road sections. Handan City has launched a focused dust control campaign on the parking lots (logistics parks) on both sides of the city's 1,444-kilometer trunk roads. Out of the 329 parking lots (logistics parks) inspected, 246 were shut down for not meeting requirements, while 83 were retained, ensuring that the parking lots have fences, fully paved areas, and full washing for entry and exit. Through strengthened industry governance, Handan City's PM10 concentration has dropped from the third lowest in the country in 2020 to the 21st lowest in 2021, reversing the passive situation of consecutive three-year PM10 concentration lags from 2017 to 2019.
Handan City also gives full play to the role of technical prevention, actively explores dust control methods, and integrates advanced technology into all aspects of dust management.
Since 2019, Handan City has been the first in the province to use sub-meter high-resolution satellite imagery for annual remote sensing identification of the city's main urban area and surrounding regions. Coordinates and areas of bare land and garbage dump sites are automatically calibrated, with clear responsibility units and整改 deadlines for each plot. The governing departments implement treatment on a plot-by-plot basis. Over the past three years, a total of 829 bare land, garbage dump, and spring white land plots have been treated, covering an area of 1728.2 hectares.
Handan City has engaged a third-party professional team to conduct road dust loading aerial monitoring, using the data to assess the effectiveness of road cleaning. The city has established road sweeping standards and regularly reports on the dust loading conditions across various counties (cities, districts). In 2021, building on the original 7 counties (districts), the aerial monitoring scope was expanded to cover 11 key counties (cities, districts) and national and provincial highways such as the 107, 309, and Handan-Linzi roads. A total of 3,630 roads were monitored, accumulating 36,000 kilometers, with an overall pass rate of 85%. Additionally, over 200 aerial monitoring operations were conducted at key industrial enterprises to further trace dust pollution sources.
Handan City has established a dust monitoring platform for the entire city, conducting a comprehensive inspection of construction sites for ongoing projects. All 530 sites have been equipped with PM10 online monitoring and video surveillance systems, which are interconnected with environmental protection and construction departments. A dust monitoring platform for the entire city has been built, with each site having its own file and implementing a checklist management system.
Four departments – Ecological Environment, Construction, Urban Management Law Enforcement, and Public Security – have implemented a joint prevention and control strategy, sharing supervision records and collectively approving the transport times and routes for waste soil vehicles. The transport time has been shifted from night to day, with speed limits set for waste soil vehicles; the urban ring road in the city's main district is restricted to 60 km/h, and city roads are limited to 45 km/h. All 663 waste soil vehicles in the main urban district have been equipped with satellite positioning systems and driving recorders, with data transmitted in real-time, enabling full monitoring of vehicle operating times, areas, speeds, and routes. The platform automatically issues an alarm for any unauthorized start-up of waste soil vehicle operations, achieving fine-grained control.
The municipal environmental protection department conducts daily inspections of two key areas: construction sites, roads, and municipal construction projects, which are major sources of dust, as well as the top 20 PM10 emission sites identified by the monitoring platform. Both environmental and construction law enforcement agencies have been working in tandem, launching multiple rounds of law enforcement campaigns. In 2021, the city issued 1,784 notifications for urgent rectification due to dust issues, suspended 216 projects for rectification, penalized 112 problematic projects, and imposed fines totaling 3.43 million yuan.
Handan City innovatively establishes a quantitative accountability method for dust issues, emphasizing both goal-oriented and problem-oriented approaches. It highlights the separate assessment of PM10 indicators for counties (cities, districts), regularly reports rankings, and uses dust issue rectification as an evaluation basis for responsibility implementation. This includes daily statistical reminders, weekly warnings, and monthly discussions and accountability. In 2021, a total of 5,317 dust-related quantitative issues were recorded, with 2 main leaders of counties (cities, districts) summoned, and 16 middle-level cadres held accountable.
Fully leveraging the supervisory role of media public opinion, a special column was launched in Handan Daily and Handan TV, among other major media outlets. In collaboration with news media, eight dust pollution "supervisory visits" were conducted. Two negative publicity videos highlighting dust pollution were aired on Handan TV, publicly exposing key dust pollution issues, which sparked a strong response and widespread resonance in society.
