GUIYANG, July 21 (Xinhua)
-- The Chinese government will enhance
monitoring of drinking water sources,
control poisonous contaminants and step
up early warning mechanisms to ensure
drinking water safety, an environmental
official told an ecological forum that
concluded on Sunday.
Ling
Jiang, deputy director of the
pollution prevention department under the
Ministry of Environmental Protection, said
that although 95.3 percent of the
monitored drinking water sources in 113
major cities across China met national
standards last year, people should not
be too optimistic about the
situation.
China has no special
national standards to monitor drinking
water sources, according to
Ling.
The figures were obtained
from 387 drinking water sources in the
113 cities and by testing only about
20 indicators based on surface water
standards. "Some harmful and poisonous
contaminants for drinking water were
not included," he said.
"We
can not conclude that the water
sources are of good quality only
because these routine indicators meet
the criteria," Ling said.
Aside
from setting down national standards,
the ministry plans to expand
monitoring points and include more
indicators in the future, according to
Ling.
The ministry also plans
to take measures to get a more
clear view of the quantity and
quality of the country's underground
water and set up a sound
pollution prevention mechanism for
underground water within five years,
he said.
Ling said the
government aims to enhance control of
poisonous contaminants from sources of
pollution, especially the chemical industry,
which has seriously threatened drinking
water sources.
"It, however,
will be extremely difficult for the
government to trace and monitor
chemical products from production,
transportation to usage," he
said.
Last month, the
country's supreme court and
procuratorate jointly issued a new
judicial explanation aimed at easing
difficulties in investigating environmental
pollution cases and convicting
polluters.
Discharging, dumping or
treating radioactive waste or waste
containing infectious disease pathogens or
toxic substances into sources of
drinking water and nature reserves
will be considered crimes of polluting
the environment, according to the
document.
"Compared with
administrative punishment, the judicial
document will increase the costs of
environmental pollution, which was previously
believed to have been too low
to curb polluting activities," Ling
said.
The outlook on the
quality of China's water sources
is "far from optimistic," according to
a report released by the Ministry
of Environmental Protection last
month.
The quality of
underground water in 57.3 percent of
the 4,929 monitoring points in 198 cities
around the country is "relatively
poor" or "extremely poor." In
addition, the resources in about 30
percent of water monitoring points in
major rivers was of poor quality,
according to the country's surface
water standards.
Environmental
pollution scares have popped up across
China in recent years.
In
March, thousands of pig carcasses were
discovered in the Huangpu River, which
provides 22 percent of Shanghai's tap
water. The incident raised significant
concerns, despite local authorities' attempts
to reassure local residents about the
safety of the water.
Liu
Changming, a hydro-engineer and academician
with the Chinese Academy of Sciences,
said Chinese cities are facing an
imbalance in water supply and demand,
expanding pollution and excessive use
of underground water after about three
decades of urbanization.
The
government should intensify management and
control of water, remedy nonpoint
source pollution, allocate water supplies
in a more scientific and rational
way, and selectively develop water
supply sources, he said.
