The goal is to significantly improve water quality by 2020, according to a plan released Thursday by the State Council, China’s cabinet. It aims to ensure that at least 70% of the water quality of major river basins reaches Grade 3 on a five-point scale--considered good enough to use as drinking water. The plan also aims to make 93% of water supply for China’s several hundred largest cities reach the same level of quality.
From the factory-discharged wastewater that turns China’s rivers into a rainbow of colors to the waves of dead livestock that periodically bob up in its waters, the country’s water pollution problems are well-documented. According to the Ministry of Land and Resources, 60% of its groundwater is polluted. Many major rivers fall below the standards set in the plan; only 56% of the water in the Songhua River basin—near China’s northeastern border with Russia—meets the quality level set in the latest plan