The state of water pollution in China is not just a nuisance but also a serious problem. The total volume of the fresh water in China is around 2700 billion cubic meters and ranked sixth in the world. It may seem impressive at first but not good enough for the most populated country in the world. If we divide the amount of water resources per head, it is significantly smaller than the world average value and China is ranked among the thirteen countries with lowest per capita water resources. Water pollution is another trait of water resources in China and so is the uneven distribution of water resources. The contamination of water resources from the discharge of a large amount of untreated wastewater has caused ecological and environmental problems.
Nanyang, central China's Henan Province, a once-pristine, unpolluted countryside is now tainted by factory sewage and domestic garbage because of the unstrained economic development. The rural water pollution is severe, human waste; factory sewage, livestock manure, pesticides, and garbage heavily pollute the rivers. Villagers are suffered from the undrinkable or even hazardous underground water. However, there are no data available on the official website and local government has made limited effort to tackle the problem.
"It's very complex to tackle the rural non-point area pollution, it’s very costly, one small town in Sheqi county will cost around 11 million yuan (nearly US$1.6 million) The difficulties we are facing with are insufficient fund and low personal qualities of rural residences, it’s hard to maintain a sustainable clean area, " according to an anonymous local EPA officer.
The EPA officer also claims that the local government has done piloting projects and “toilet revolution” project to prevent rural area pollution. There are three piloting towns in the county, Qiaotou, Lidian, Miaodian all have been treated after pollution. Each small town got about 11 million yuan. The fund is given by Henan province, and the county government doesn’t have the fund for tackling local rural area pollution, now Sheqi County still has 14 towns that are heavily polluted and waiting for environmental treatment.
“Nowadays, the most serious rural area pollution is the livestock manure and sewage discharged by the small pig farm. Affected by the domestic market has imported pork in a large scale, the small pig farms shut down their business initiatively,” said by the local EPA officer, “the countryside not only has numerous plastic bags but also has the untreated manure discharged by pig farms. This is a common phenomenon in rural areas of central China.”
Even though the government has implemented "police chiefs" combat water pollution in central China. However, according to the anonymous local EPA officer, these police chiefs were basically a publicity stunt, in terms of specific implementation, only the recovery of the polluted rivers in the county is more effective."
According to the data of Ministry of Land and Recourses via China Water Risk, in the northern part of China, 78.8% of shallow water and 76.9% of deep water are polluted and should not touch human skin. Polluted water with hazardous rank could cause different kinds of diseases. Greenpeace research also shows that nearly half the country has missed its five-year water quality targets; including 14 provinces, such as Liaoning, Henan, Beijing, etc. Among them, Inner Mongolia, Sichuan and Shanxi not only failed to complete the “12th Five Year Plan” water quality improvement target but also showed a trend of deterioration of water quality during the “12th Five Year Plan” period.
In 2016 the Chinese government said it would spend 430 billion yuan ($62.4 billion) on around 4,800 separate projects aimed at improving the quality of its water supplies, though it did not give a timeframe. The aim of the Chinese government to provide centralized drinking water supply and tap water to at least 85 and 80 percent of its rural population by 2020, is very challenging but with constant efforts and determination, it is perhaps possible to deliver safe and reliable water to all the rural households across the country.
China being one of the leading countries in the list of global polluters, NGOs play an increasingly important role in assessing the environmental and human-health related problems and how to tackle the issue of the pollution. For example, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) is promoting information disclosure with government collaboration, and attempting to bring back blue skies and clear waters. Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims protects the environmental rights and interests of pollution victims. There are few NGOs working on water pollution specifically but the numbers are not large and the scale of work is limited. MyH2O is a nationwide water-testing network of well-trained youths and provides an interactive platform where all the data may be uploaded for public access. They have recruited environmental science and engineering college volunteers from all over China to go to rural areas and conduct the water quality field tests. Their aim is to make people aware of the rural residents aware of the local drinking water conditions. As of fall 2016, MyH2O water investigations have conducted over 800 tests in different villages in 23 provinces. There are around 80 participating teams now and they have collected over 2000 data points. The next step for MyH2O is to build upon their existing network of teams and scientifically trained students and explore both the problem discovery and solution related to the water pollution in rural areas.
On the question, I found out that their data is not yet public. Charlene Ren, the founder of My H2O responded, "there is no specific definition of the quality of water, for example, in the case of air pollution; we can measure it by PM2.5. Therefore, it is difficult to quantify the data as even if we measure ten different parameters that result positive, the water may not necessarily be clean. It is very difficult to communicate to the public unless there is a standardize parameter that is scientifically robust to measure the quality of water. A lot of testing and precautions are needed before we provide these data for public access on our platform."
According to a recent report from China Water Risk, in China, approximately 60 percent population is living in major cities and the number is increasing every year. Also, there is a gap in the distribution of resources and as expected, the urban water supply has progressed much faster. Further, rural water management varies between different administrative levels, but also across regions. For scattered, small and isolated villages, decentralized solutions will be more useful than the centralized drinking water source is supplied to the population of above 1000 only. It is also important to protect the quality of groundwater, as the groundwater reliance is much higher in central, western and northeastern China. Finally, there is a strong need to shift the focus from single point management to basin-wide management from mountains to the sea.
