BEIJING, Oct. 25 (Xinhuanet) -- China's environmental agency on Tuesday suspended four construction projects for violating the country's environmental protection laws and regulations.

    "The projects should have applied for the checking of their environmental protection facilities before being put into operation upon completion of construction," said the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) in a statement.

    However, in violation of laws, all the projects were put into production or trial operation before they applied to the environmental protection authorities for inspections, it said.

    The projects include a coal power plant and a chemical fertilizer plant in northeast China's Liaoning Province, a cement plant in southern Guangdong Province and part of an expressway running through a suburb of Tianjin.

    Chinese laws stipulate that environmental protection facilities in a construction project should be designed, constructed and put into use simultaneously with the project.

    And after the construction completes, the project should first apply to environmental protection departments for checking and approving of the environmental protection facilities in the project before it can be put into operation.

    In the statement, SEPA asked the four projects to make up the environmental checking procedures immediately and spelled out a series of penalties.

    This is another major move taken by SEPA this year to enforce environmental protection laws and regulations.

    At the beginning of the year, SEPA suspended the construction of 30 large projects worth billions of US dollars for violating the country's laws on environmental impact assessment. Enditem