Funding pays off for cleaner water

Source: Xinhua  |   2008-12-25  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

CHINA said yesterday that it has spent nearly 24 billion yuan (US$3.5 billion) in the past two years to give more than 8 percent of its 1.3 billion people safer drinking water.

Environmental Protection Minister Zhou Shengxian said in a report to the National People's Congress Standing Committee that more than 109 million rural people have benefited from the water investment since 2006.

The urban sewage treatment rate reached 63 percent in 2007, an 11-percentage-point rise from 2005, he said.

The central government has built farm biogas projects and ramped up efforts to protect wetlands, build more shelter belts and promote scientific fertilizer distribution in the countryside.

The country has also clamped down on sources of pollution, Zhou said.

More than 1.6 million law enforcement officials investigated more than 700,000 enterprises nationwide, among which more than 15,000 were punished for polluting the environment, he said.

The country is still challenged by serious water pollution despite the efforts to solve the problem, the official said.

Algae blooms were repeatedly reported in lakes and rivers, affecting people's drinking water, he said.

Among the known 462 environmental pollution cases that occurred in 2007, nearly 40 percent involved water contamination.

Sulfur dioxide levels and chemical oxygen demand, two key pollution indicators, have dropped since 2006, but China still faces difficulty meeting its target of cutting those pollutants by 10 percent of the 2005 figure by the end of 2010, Zhou said.

Slow progress in parts of the country and the disregard of discharge standards by some industrial enterprises were making the task more difficult, he noted, while vowing to step up efforts to control water pollution.

The official underlined the importance of cutting discharges and modernizing highly polluting industries, including paper making, brewing, printing and dyeing, leather making and the medical, mineral and chemical sectors.

The government will establish tougher requirements for enterprises and companies that want to be involved in its 4-trillion-yuan stimulus package over the next few years, he said.

"The country is not going to relax environmental standards in exchange for a boost in domestic consumption," Zhou said.

He also said China would make every effort to tackle pollution in major river basins, increase protection of rural water resources and carry out cross-province cooperation to address pollution.

Zhou's report was open for debate during the Standing Committee meeting, which started on Monday.