Before even reaching the community entrance, we found large piles of yellow sand and gravel uncovered at the roadside, and the road surface was coated in a thick "outer layer" of yellow mud; both sides of the road were piled with various construction materials and waste, and whenever the wind blew there was dust everywhere. A taxi driver said that vendors selling sand, cement and other building materials deliver directly to customers' doors, doing business right at the community entrance.

　　Entering the construction area inside the community, we saw construction waste piled up at will, not concentrated and enclosed for storage as required; the construction roads and excavated ground were muddy and dusty, with no road hardening or covering measures; excavators were busy working without any water-spraying dust suppression measures.

　　The reporter called the Daxing District Housing and Urban-Rural Development Commission. Staff at the Construction Project Quality Supervision Station told the reporter that they are only responsible for supervising project quality and safety, have no management responsibility or enforcement authority over construction dust at building sites, said they could only "pass a word to the site," and suggested the reporter complain to the urban management department.

　　The reporter then called the urban management hotline "96310" to report the situation. Several hours later, an urban management enforcement officer called back to say he had been to the community construction site and urged it to take measures to stop construction dust. But he also said that the small vendors outside the community were not under his jurisdiction and fell within the scope of another enforcement team, and suggested the reporter call the urban management hotline again to report the problem.

　　According to monitoring and analysis by environmental protection authorities, dust pollution accounts for about 15.8% of PM2.5 sources, mainly including construction site dust and vehicle transport dust. The reporter's investigation found that the competent department for construction sites is the Housing and Urban-Rural Development Commission; areas outside the site are managed by the municipal administration and city appearance department; the environmental protection department is mainly responsible for monitoring; and construction waste transport vehicles running on the roads are managed by the transport department. At the same time, because the housing and urban-rural development, municipal administration and city appearance, and environmental protection departments all lack enforcement authority, they can only enforce the law jointly with the urban management department, while the transport department can only punish vehicles' traffic violations. This overlapping, multi-headed management situation has made dust pollution from construction sites a hot potato. Fang Li, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau, said that improving air quality requires the joint efforts of multiple departments, and no single department can solve environmental problems alone.

　　Not long ago, the Beijing Municipal Housing and Urban-Rural Development Commission exposed four construction sites with serious dust pollution. The problems included failure to set up enclosed waste stations as required, large areas of exposed earth not covered, and main roads not hardened or sprinkled with water for dust suppression as required. It also issued a citywide notice of criticism against six construction companies and suspended their eligibility to bid in Beijing for 30 days. However, experts said that judging from the penalties imposed by the commission this time, they seem to have only a symbolic effect. Compared with the cost to construction companies of controlling dust pollution, such penalties are unlikely to deter them and are insufficient to urge them to correct their behavior. To thoroughly solve the construction dust problem, it is necessary not only to straighten out the management mechanism and change the current situation in which departments "each manage their own patch," but also to improve the penalty mechanism and raise the cost of violations for the companies involved, so as to restore a piece of clean land to the people.