The Ministry of Environmental Protection reported progress in the implementation of the Action Plan on Water Pollution Prevention and Control

       Recently, the Ministry of Environmental Protection notified the progress of the implementation of the "Water Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan" (hereinafter referred to as the "Water Ten").

      According to the introduction of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, all localities and relevant departments of The State Council actively implemented the "Water Ten" and made phased progress. The Ministry of Environmental Protection will summarize it in a timely manner, regularly prepare a "Brief on Water pollution prevention and control", inform The State Council and various localities and relevant departments of the implementation progress and work experience of the "Water Ten", and jointly promote the implementation of the "Water Ten".      

The so-called "Water Ten" is the second environmental protection action plan issued by the new government after the "Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan" issued in September 2013. It was issued by The State Council in April this year and has been implemented for six months.

      As of late September this year, five issues of the "Brief on Water Pollution Prevention and Control Work" have been released. "As far as the implementation of the" Water Ten "is concerned, the most critical is the consultation mechanism for water pollution prevention and control, related supporting policies, target responsibility and assessment methods of these four work, are currently being promoted." An official of the Ministry of Environmental Protection introduced to the 21st Century Business Herald.  

According to the requirements of the "Water Ten", local people's governments at all levels are the main body of the implementation of the "Water Ten", to formulate and publish the work plan for water pollution prevention and control before the end of 2015, and determine the key tasks and annual targets of the sub-basin, sub-region and sub-industry every year, and report to The State Council for the record.

In 2015, the central government provided 13 billion yuan of special funds

At the central level, various ministries and commissions are introducing supporting policies.

In order to support and guide the implementation of the "Water Ten" tasks and improve the efficiency of the use of financial funds, in July, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Environmental Protection jointly issued the "Measures for the Management of Special Funds for Water Pollution Prevention and Control".

The special fund will focus on supporting the prevention and control of water pollution in key river basins, ecological environment protection of rivers and lakes with good water quality, environmental protection of drinking water sources, environmental protection and pollution restoration of underground water, improvement of black and odorous urban water bodies, water environment protection and treatment of trans-boundary and trans-provincial rivers, and pilot projects for comprehensive improvement of land and rivers.

In 2015, the scale of special funds increased to 13 billion yuan, of which 6.27 billion yuan was used for the protection of the lake ecological environment, 180 million yuan was used for the Liaohe river water environment comprehensive renovation project, 550 million yuan was used for the comprehensive renovation pilot of territorial rivers, 5 billion yuan was used for the implementation of other tasks of the "Water Ten", and 1 billion yuan was reserved for responding to water pollution emergencies.

The so-called land and river comprehensive regulation pilot is a new pilot determined by the Guiding Opinions on the Pilot Work of Land and River Comprehensive Regulation jointly issued by the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Water Resources in May this year.

The pilot will focus on investigation and evaluation and capacity building, water resources conservation and intensive use, comprehensive management of soil and water pollution sources, ecological protection and restoration of river basins, and flood and disaster reduction of rivers and lakes, and carry out work according to six steps: pilot first, implementation plan preparation, agreement signing, funding arrangement, project implementation and performance evaluation. At present, the state has carried out pilot projects in the Dongjiang River basin and the Luanhe River Basin.

According to the arrangement of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the special funds for water pollution prevention and control are mainly allocated by means of factor law and competition law, supporting local pollution control projects by means of awards and subsidies, and leaning toward projects that adopt the mode of cooperation between government and social capital. According to the results of water pollution prevention and control performance evaluation, reward the best and punish the bad.

At the same time, in order to implement the "Water Ten", the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Ministry of Finance issued a special document in April to encourage the promotion of the PPP model in the field of water pollution prevention and control, and expand the cooperation field from the traditional urban sewage treatment and garbage treatment to other key areas involved in the "Water Ten", while proposing to gradually open the field of water pollution prevention and control to social capital.

Two months later, the Ministry of Finance issued the Notice on Further Doing a good Job in the Demonstration Work of Government-Social Capital Cooperation Projects, urging and guiding all localities to accelerate the demonstration work of PPP projects and form a number of replicable and popularizable implementation examples as soon as possible.

In addition, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Ministry of Environmental Protection jointly issued the "Guidelines for the remediation of Urban Black and Smelly Water Bodies" in September, and are preparing a national black and smelly water body remediation and supervision platform to regularly release information and accept public reports.

Beijing and Tianjin have basically completed the preparation of work plans

Compared with the progress at the central level, the progress of the local implementation of the "Water ten" has attracted more attention.

According to the "Water pollution prevention and control work Briefing 5" revealed that at the end of August, the Ministry of Environmental Protection chaired the key regional water pollution prevention and control work coordination meeting, Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia province (district, city) government deputy Secretary-General attended the meeting, exchange and discuss the "water Ten" implementation progress, water pollution prevention and control linkage mechanism and other matters.

According to the news released on the website of Zhejiang Provincial Environmental Protection Department, the meeting proposed that the Yangtze River Delta water pollution prevention linkage mechanism and air pollution prevention linkage mechanism should be combined into one, and the Yangtze River Delta regional cooperation group should jointly promote the prevention and control of water and air pollution in the region.

"One of the main purposes of this meeting is to ask all localities to submit the names of the members of the coordination group for the implementation of the Water Tenth Act." The aforementioned official of the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

In many places, leading groups have been set up to establish departmental collaboration mechanisms. For example, Inner Mongolia has set up a leading group for water pollution prevention and control work in the region, led by the Standing Committee of the Party Committee and the Executive Vice chairman of the government, Fu Taizeng, and Vice Chairmen Wang Yuming, Wang Bo and Chang Junzheng. Established a departmental cooperation mechanism, as well as the autonomous region-bureau-League city information reporting linkage mechanism, the relevant commission offices, bureaus and league cities have set up information officers, timely report water pollution prevention and control information.

For another example, Shandong has established a joint meeting system of departments to implement the "Water Ten", which is led by the provincial government and holds joint meetings from time to time to discuss major issues, report and dispatch work progress, and realize information resource sharing.

According to the requirements of the "Water Ten", all localities should formulate and publish work plans for water pollution prevention and control by the end of 2015.

"Water pollution Prevention and control work Brief 5" revealed that Beijing, Tianjin and other places have basically completed the work plan for water pollution prevention and control, to be submitted to the municipal government for approval; The first draft of the work plan for water pollution prevention and control in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui and Shandong has been completed and is being solicited for comments.

It is worth noting that in order to do a good job of water pollution prevention and control work plan, Tianjin is carrying out a comprehensive investigation of water pollution, water resources and water ecological foundation status in urban and built-up areas of black and smelly water bodies.

In accordance with the requirements of "horizontal to the edge, vertical to the end, comprehensive investigation, leaving no dead corners", the investigation effectively found out the current situation of water pollution, water resources and water ecology in Tianjin, and identified the problems and reasons affecting the quality of water environment; The work plan and relevant investigation forms for the investigation of water pollution sources and the status quo of the water environment have been formulated and issued, and the relevant departments of the city are working with all districts and counties to carry out in-depth investigation.

Beijing, Jiangsu and other places self-pressure

According to the "Water Pollution Prevention and Control Work Brief 5", all localities are actively breaking down the local implementation of the "Water Ten" goals.

The local government said that it will strive to meet the requirements that can be operated and implemented. For example, Beijing has difficulties in meeting the national requirements of target indicators, such as the proportion of good water quality, the proportion of black and odor in urban river reaches, identify the crux of the problem, implement targeted measures, and make every effort to complete the target indicators issued by the state.

Take the treatment of black and smelly water bodies as an example, in about two years, the black and smelly water bodies in the central city and the built-up areas of the new city will be basically eliminated, and in about five years, the inferior V water bodies will be substantially reduced, and the quality of the water environment will be comprehensively improved.

For another example, Shanghai focuses on the difficulties, the implementation of key projects in advance, and the comprehensive implementation of the upgrading of urban sewage treatment plants; To achieve full coverage of sewage pipe networks, pollution sources are fully intercepted and pipe; Focus on strengthening the construction of upstream water source of Huangpu River; Implement the sewage interception transformation of rainwater pumping stations in central urban areas, and basically eliminate the periodic black odor of river channels; We will adjust the layout and control the total amount of large-scale livestock and poultry farms, and complete the rectification and closure of non-standard small and medium-sized livestock and poultry farms.

It is noticeable that many places are also pressuring themselves to put forward more stringent requirements while fulfilling the goals set by the state.

Among them, for the target indicators that have been dynamically approaching the completion of the task, such as the quality of centralized drinking water sources, sewage treatment rate, recycled water utilization rate, etc., in accordance with the requirements of the target indicators tasks issued by the "Water Ten", Beijing has self-pressurized and put forward more stringent indicators.

At the same time, in terms of target indicators, the goals of the work program are generally not lower than the national requirements, and some are stricter than the national requirements. If the water quality of the drinking water source reaches or is better than the Class I proportion index, the scope is extended to the water source above the county level, and the index value is increased to 95%; The elimination of black odor in urban water bodies has been expanded to urban built-up areas above the county level.

In addition, many places are also adapting to local conditions and innovating management systems. For example, Hebei has fully considered the special structure of water environment, water ecology and water resources, and proposed eight "water control projects" : "grasping water saving, controlling sewage, cleaning river water, purifying lake water, controlling seawater, ensuring water supply, transferring customer water and pressurizing water".

In view of its regional characteristics, Hebei put forward the "two lines and three regions" water control strategy, based on the reservoir mountain front and the coastline, the province's water control area is divided into mountain water conservation area, plain river regulation area and coastal sea area prevention and control area, reflecting the differentiated water control strategy, to avoid "one size fits all"; Overall planning of water environment, water resources and water ecological remediation, refining industrial pollution sources, urban domestic pollution sources, rural pollution sources, traffic sources of "four sources of the same" system of water control system.