Nation makes strides improving rural environment, water quality

The country has made significant strides in improving the rural living environment, successfully eliminating the majority of large-scale black and odorous water bodies in rural China, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment announced.

As of the end of July, over 3,400 such dirty water bodies have been cleaned up, accomplishing 80 percent of the tasks set for the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), Zhao Shixin, head of the ministry's department of soil ecology and environment, said at a news conference on Monday.

According to a 2021-25 action plan for rural pollution control, which was published by the ministry and another four national government bodies in early 2022, China aims to essentially eradicate all of the large-scale black and odorous water bodies by 2025.

The achievement happened thanks to a series of measures the ministry rolled out, which prioritize these heavily polluted water bodies that are on people's doorsteps, he noted.

The ministry compiled a detailed list of all black and odorous water bodies in rural China. To ensure they can be adequately treated as scheduled, the ministry brought under its priority supervision about 4,000 of them, he said.

Another almost 10,000 were brought under the priority supervision of provincial-level authorities, he added.

He said the ministry also organizes dynamic inspections of black and odorous water bodies that local governments claim to have cleaned up to make sure that they have been adequately treated as reported.

Satellite remote sensing has been applied to facilitate the inspection, and water quality monitoring is carried out regularly, he added.

Water quality monitoring carried out since 2022 in 2,612 water bodies that are no longer black and odorous shows that 97 percent of them have been adequately treated, he said.

"In addition to analyzing the factors to blame for the reoccurrence of heavy pollution, the ministry will also urge and guide local authorities to rectify problems in a timely manner and establish long-term mechanisms to keep them clean," he said.

Zhao also highlighted remarkable progress in the treatment of rural domestic sewage.

He said that as of June, about 45 percent of such waste water in rural China has been collected for treatment, compared with 28 percent in 2021.

Under the ministry's organization, over 2,700 county-level areas across the country have formulated plans dedicated to rural domestic sewage treatment, he said.

Pei Xiaofei, the ministry's spokesman, said the country has seen the quality of its surface water generally improve in the first half this year.

About 88.8 percent of national monitoring sections across the country reported fairly good water quality from January to June, up by 1 percentage point year-on-year, he said. Only 0.8 percent of these sections registered water quality below Grade V, down by 0.2 percentage point from the same period last year.

China has a five-tier quality system for surface water, with Grade I the best. The quality can be considered as being fairly good if it reaches Grade III and above.

According to the ministry, 83.4 percent of the country's surface water in 2020 was found to be fairly good quality, and the proportion of those with quality of below Grade V stood at 0.6 percent.