China delays controversial incinerator after protests

A local, wearing a gas mask, holds a banner reading ''oppose garbage incineration, protect green Guangzhou'' as she protests outside government offices in Guangzhou, Guangdong province November 23, 2009.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Authorities in China's southern city of Guangzhou have put off plans to install a garbage incinerator after hundreds of people protested, saying its location posed a health hazard.

Witnesses said more than 1,200 people had demanded the resignation of the city's deputy general secretary, Lu Zhiyi, during a large protest outside the Guangzhou Municipal Government building last month.

Nearly 92 percent of residents believe the Panyu project will seriously harm their health and the environment, while more than 97 percent oppose construction of the plant, according a public opinion poll by the provincial social research and study centre in Guangdong province, China's manufacturing heartland.

"We realised the handling of garbage is of crucial importance to people's lives," Xinhua news agency quoted Panyu's Communist Party boss Tan Yinghua as saying.

"From today on, we will start from the beginning," Tan told residents.

"We will mobilise all the residents in Panyu to discuss the location and construction of the incinerator," he said, in an acknowledgement of public anger by the stability-obsessed ruling party.

The Panyu waste incineration plant, which is supposed to handle 2,000 tonnes of trash a day, will be now be operational sometime after late 2012, Xinhua said, after completing consultations with residents on its location.

Guangzhou has experienced serious environmental degradation after nearly three decades of break-neck development.

Environmental activism, however, has grown in recent years as the city's burgeoning middle class pursue a higher quality of life.

In a recent case, a proposed multi-billion dollar oil refinery in the ecologically rich Nansha district just downstream from Guangzhou along the Pearl River, was relocated to a less populated area in western Guangdong after a major public uproar.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)