Today, an official from Ministry of Environmental Protection briefed on the media about the implementation of the target-hitting accountability documents for prevention and control of water pollution in the Huaihe River Basins in 2007. According to this official, the governments of four provinces in the Huaihe River basin, that is, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, and Henan, sped up the construction of sewage treatment projects this year, innovated the working mechanism, and exercised strict target-hitting accountability assessments, so that new results were achieved in controlling the pollution in the Huaihe River. Compared with last year, the overall water quality of this river remained stable.

He said, from February 25-28, 2008, the former SEPA, NDRC, Ministry of Supervision, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Construction and Ministry of Water Conservancy set up four inspection groups together, inspected and evaluated the above four provinces on the implementation of Target-hitting Accountability Documents for Prevention and Control of Water Pollution in the Huaihe River Basins (2005-2010) (hereinafter referred to as the Target-hitting Accountability Documents) in 2007. So far, 415 out of the 488 pollution control projects listed in the 10^th Five-Year Plan on Prevention and Control of Water Pollution in the Huaihe River Basins (hereinafter referred to as the 10^th Five-Year Plan) have been concluded, accounting for 85%. Added by the projects out of the 10^th Five-Year Plan, 191 municipal sewage treatment plants were built up in the basin, with the capacity of about 7.47 million tons/day. 264 out of 381 sewage treatment projects listed in 2005-2007 Plan on Wastewater Treatment Projects for Key Industries in Huaihe River Basins (hereinafter referred to as Industrial Wastewater Treatment Plan) have been concluded, accounting for 69%. Compared with the year before, the overall water quality of this river remained stable.

The official briefed on the work of the four provinces to hit the indicators of Target-hitting Accountability Document.

First of all, the progress of the sewage treatment projects. According to the Target-hitting Accountability Document, Shandong, Jiangsu, and Henan should complete 90% of the sewage treatment projects listed in the 10^th Five-Year Plan and Industrial Wastewater Treatment Plan and Anhui should complete 85% of them in 2007. The inspection found that Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu, and Anhui completed 92%, 88%, 79% and 68% respectively of the projects in the 10^th Five-Year Plan and 98%, 38%, 76% and 38% of the projects in Industrial Wastewater Treatment Plan. Apart from Shandong, the other three provinces failed to fulfill the Target-hitting Accountability Document.

Second, water quality in cross-provincial-boundary river sections. There are 25 cross-provincial-boundary river sections in the Huaihe River Basins. In terms of permanganate index or COD index, 24 of the sections were up to standard, the same as the year before. In terms of ammonia nitrogen, 21 of the sections were up to standard, two more than that in 2006. The overall up-to-standard rate was 84%. The rates for Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, and Henan were 100%, 100%, 89% and 70% respectively.

Third, control of the total amount of pollutants. In 2007, 208,000, 90,000, 118,000 and 151,000 tons of COD flowed into the the Huaihe River from Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong, and Henan respectively, and 13,000, 24,000, 10,000 and 12,000 tons of ammonia nitrogen. All this complied with the Target-hitting Accountability Document.

Fourth, the overall treatment work. In 2007, Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, and Henan had 89.7%, 89.0%, 79.9% and 78.6% of the wastewater from polluters meet with the standards; 79.0%, 78.3%, 76.4% and 66.4% (>75% according to the Target-hitting Accountability Document) of their municipal sewage treatment plants were loaded; and 90.2%, 95.8%, 79.0% and 93.6% of the sewage treatment fees were collected. In terms of sewage treatment rate in cities directly under the province, Anhui was 43.2%, and the other three provinces were all above 70%. In terms of sewage treatment rate in districts (counties) of county-level cities, Anhui was 17.0%, and the other three were all more than 50%. Anhui failed to meet the requirements of the Target-hitting Accountability Document. Apart from Henan, the other three provinces restructured their municipal sewage treatment units.

Fifth, environmental regulation. The polluters in the Huaihe River Basins were basically able to possess licenses for pollutant discharge. 100%, 100%, 98% and 80% of the major pollutant sources and sewage treatment plants in Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu, and Anhui were installed on-line monitoring facilities.

Although new progress was made in the four provinces to treat the Huaihe River, the River was still moderately polluted in overall situation, and there was a gap between the status quo and the requirements of the Target-hitting Accountability Document as well as the expectations of people along the river banks. There are mainly four aspects of problems.

First, some of the problems related to the ammonia nitrogen pollution in the outlet cross-boundary sections are not effectively solved. Four sections failed to meet the standards and ammonia nitrogen was the main pollutant factor. The four sections are the Fuqiao Gate of Wohe River in Luyi County of Henan, Zhidian town along Yinghe River in Shenqiu County, Lifen Village along Quhe River in Shenqiu County of Henan, and Xipianhong section in West Picang Floodway of Shandong. Huangqiao Section of Kuihe River in Jiangsu also failed to meet the standards and COD was the main pollution factor.

Second, some of the pollution treatment projects need to speed up. 89 of the projects listed in the 10^th Five-Year Plan and Industrial Wastewater Treatment Plan were being commissioned, 43 of them were under construction, and 58 projects were not started. Fewer projects listed in the Industrial Wastewater Treatment Plan were completed.

Third, municipal sewage treatment plants need to improve the efficiency of trimming pollutants. In municipal sewage treatment plants in the Basins, there were ubiquitous problems of unsupportive pipes, lower loading rate, few technicians and poor management. Some of the established sewage treatment plants had outdated nitrogen and phosphor removal facilities, and it was hard to transform them. The system to collect sewage treatment fees in cities was still to be improved.

Fourth, the environmental regulation capacity is still poor. The city-and county-level environmental protection bureaus in the Basins had lower law enforcement level and technical level. The capacity of environmental monitoring, pre-warning, emergency response and law enforcement failed to meet the new requirements for environmental protection in the new context.

According to this official, to further strengthen pollutant control in the Basins, the above four provinces along the Huaihe River should lay the emphasis on the following five works.

First, they should make overall arrangements for the pollution control and reduction in the River. They should focus on the projects in the 11^th Five-Year Plan for Huaihe River in terms of policy and capitals for reduction of total amount of water pollutants. They should closely integrate the target-hitting assessment on pollutant reduction with the target-hitting assessment on pollution control, and connect the total amount of pollutant reduction with the improvement of water quality in the Basins.

Second, they should intensify the control of pollution triggered by ammonia nitrogen. They should strengthen the overall environmental treatment in the industry, carry out in-depth pollution treatment and cleaner production, earnestly lower the emissions of ammonia nitrogen, raise the environmental access thresholds, guide local places to enforce stricter standards on emission of ammonia nitrogen, and strictly control the approval of new projects that discharge nitrogen factors into the main stream and tributaries of the Huaihe River.

Third, they should urge to speed up implementing the planned projects. The four provinces should pay close attention to making plans on a yearly basis in order to implement the 11^th Five-Year Plan, specify the tasks in the Plan, and speed up implementing the planned projects.

Fourth, they should improve the construction, operation and management of sewage treatment facilities. They should speed up and improve the construction of supportive pipes, nitrogen and phosphor removal facilities and sludge disposal facilities in municipal sewage treatment plants, and further raise the loading rate of such plants as well as the sewage treatment rates.

Fifth, they should further intensify the environmental regulation. They should improve the capacity building on environmental regulation, and upgrade the law enforcement level and technical level in the frontline of environmental protection. They should organize public and private investigation of polluters, supervise the settlement of typical environmental pollution problems, and punish them by law according to the upper limit of penalties. They should restrict the approval of construction projects or carry out industrial treatment in areas and industries suffering from prominent environmental violations.