Transit of policies and measures for water pollution prevention: transit from point-source pollution to integrated treatment of river basins, from end-of-pipe treatment to head-source and entire process control, from concentration control to the combination control of total
amount and concentration, and from pollution prevention as main measure to paying attention on both pollution prevention and ecological conservation. The main measures include:
a) To control the total amount of pollutant discharge. Local governments and various sector control the total industrial and urban domestic sewage discharge in an active way in connection with the industrial restructuring;
b) To implement strictly the Environmental Impact Assessment and “Three-Simultaneities” regimes, and veto the new construction projects that do not fit in with the environmental requirements and industrial policies;
c) To phase out and close down a number of production capacity, processes, products and enterprises with serious environmental pollution and waste of resources;
d) To promote cleaner production in enterprises in connection with technology innovation. The discharge of the main pollution in industrial pollution sources have attained the standards;
e) To devote great efforts to the development of ecological agriculture and organic agriculture, and the integrated environmental treatment in small river basins;
f) To turn the sewage into resource. The sewage with treatment to certain standards is reused;
g) To speed up the infrastructure construction of urban sewage treatment plants, and promote water pollution prevention with economic instruments. In order to solve the problem of urban sewage, State Environmental Protection Administration, jointly with relevant departments, has issued the Notice on Enhancing the Levy of Sewage Treatment Fee and Establishing Benign Operation Mechanism of Urban Sewage Discharge and Centralized Treatment of Urban Sewage, as well as the Notice of Levy Mechanism of Urban Sewage and Industrialization of Garbage Treatment. Relevant systems have been set up in local areas to guide the social funds to invest the construction and operation of environmental infra-structure in various forms, which has strengthened the urban environmental treatment and infra-structure construction;
h) To increase investment in pollution prevention. Since 1998, environmental protection has been regarded as an important point of the active financial policies. Over 69 billion Yuan national bonds have been used in the key engineering projects of pollution prevention, most of which is directly or indirectly used in the treatment of pollution prevention, with effective impact on the financial investment in environmental protection by local governments and society.
In the context of per capita GDP less than 800 US dollars, China started pollution treatment in river basins on large scale, which rarely happens in the world and is the first case in the developing countries. With efforts for many years, achievements have been made in the water pollution treatment in major river basins. The industrial pollution sources have basically attained the discharge standards. A large number of enterprises with serious pollution and low profits have been phased out. A great deal of urban sewage treatment plants have been completed and put to operation. In the context of rapid economic growth and population increase in the river basin, the trend of rapid water quality degradation in the river basin is under basic control. In 2003, percentage of the sections under control in Huai River, Hai river and Liao River that have attained the water quality target of the 10th Five Year Plan is 56%, 43% and 46% respectively, among
which the water quality in Huai River Basin has been improved significantly, and the section attaining the standards has increase by 30% over 2000. The organic pollution and eutrophication in “Three Lakes” area has been improved to certain extent, and the water quality in the main lake areas of Tai Lake has been improved significantly.