Government to spend billions to clean water

Source:South China Morning Post
Date of issue:10/9/2007 Monday 00:03am
Topic related: the trouble of water

The government will outlay billions of yuan over the next five years to secure drinking water supplies and rehabilitate its many seriously contaminated water sources, a key government water pollution adviser said yesterday.

Zheng Binghui , director of the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences' Institute of Water Environment, said the exact budget amount was under discussion at high central government levels but it would be at least 1 trillion yuan, half of which the Ministry of Construction has suggested would go to securing drinking water sources at three river and three lake areas that feed half of the provinces on the mainland.


The targeted rivers are the Huai, the Hai and the Liao and the lakes are Tai, Chao and Dianchi, Dr Zheng told the annual meeting of the China Association for Science and Technology in Wuhan yesterday.

In a State Council meeting last month, Premier Wen Jiabao urged cities to expand the capacity of existing water storage facilities, locate new sources, and upgrade water treatment systems and urban water supply networks.

Governments at all levels must secure drinking water for urban areas, Mr Wen said, and the most urgent issues were substandard or polluted drinking water sources in some urban centres and the inability of some cities to generate enough supplies.

Dr Zheng said nearly half of all urban drinking water sources failed to meet national standards in 1981, and, in 1998, the failure rate was more than 83 per cent, according to studies carried out by his institute.

Their latest survey suggests more than 450 drinking water sources in key national environmental protection cities could not meet the standards, a number six times higher than the official figure. But these results have not been made available to the mainland public.

"If we release these figures to the public, there will be total havoc ... The figures we reported to the central government are classified," he said.

"There is only one correct figure you and Xinhua can report, and that is the official figure."
Speaking in English to a multinational audience, Dr Zheng said Hunan , Anhui , Jiangsu and Shanxi provinces were the worst in terms of drinking water safety.

"For the river-type water sources, Hunan province and Anhui province had the lowest rate of meeting national standards, just 60.28 per cent and 46.7 per cent respectively; for lake and reservoir type water sources, the lowest rates were in Anhui province with 71.4 per cent and Jiangsu province with 30.7 per cent."

Nearly half of the undergound water sources in Shanxi were not suitable for drinking, he said.
In terms of the mainalnd's high-profile algal outbreaks this year, Dr Zheng said lake and reservoir type water resources were serious polluted and nutrient levels generally exceeded standards.

"Seventy-five per cent of the lakes show [excessive nutrient levels] to a different extent. The drinking water sources in the Three Gorges Reservoir tributaries are in danger."

Dr Zheng said existing controls covering protected source water areas were ineffective.

"In Hubei province, investigations showed that unauthorised construction existed in 23 water source protection zones.

"In Ningxia , in a centralised drinking water source protection zone there are 73 enterprises with ... annual ammonia emissions of 1,023 tonnes."