The water quality in the Yangtze River has been improved to meet the national standards, the provincial government said on Monday.
As of the end of September, Jiangsu has eliminated sections of the Yangtze River where the water quality failed to meet the national grade-V standards, which is the lowest quality grade in China's five-tier system.
Ten sections of the Yangtze River have measured up to the standards for grade-II, which is one grade higher from the time when the standards were implemented.
Since the start of this year, Jiangsu has launched two on-site promotion meetings, enhanced law enforcement efforts on water pollution control and stepped up the inspection on the sewage outlets leading into the Yangtze River.
In the meantime, Jiangsu has made strenuous efforts to keep tab on urban sewage garbage, chemical pollution, agricultural non-point source pollution, and pollution from passing ships so as to ensure the safety of drinking water sources and boost the improvement of ecological environment along the Yangtze.
In March this year, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment announced that it had drawn up an action plan to improve the water quality of the Yangtze River over the next two years.
The ministry aims to finish the overhaul of sewage outlets and eliminate nearly all water below Grade V near the river by 2020 under the action plan, which was released by the ministry and the National Development and Reform Commission on Monday.
Other goals include guaranteeing at least 1,000 metric tons of drinking water a day in the Yangtze River Economic Zones and suspending all large-scale construction activities that affect the river.
The overall quality of China's water bodies improved in the first quarter of 2019, but more efforts to prevent and control water pollution are needed in some regions that have seen deteriorated water quality, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment or MEE said in May this year.
The quality of China's water environment has improved in general, with the proportion of water with good quality, Grade I to III, increasing by 8 percentage points year on year, and the proportion of water that is functionally unusable, Grade V or worse, decreasing by 3.6 percentage points compared to last year, the ministry said.
（source：ourjiangsu.com）
