China’s environment authority yesterday suspended operations at three plants and an expressway 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 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, according to the statement.  The projects are a coal power plant and a chemical fertilizer plant in Liaoning Province, a cement plant in Guangdong Province and part of an expressway running through a suburb of Tianjin.  SEPA asked the four to make up the environmental checking procedures immediately and spelled out a series of penalties. Published under Cement News