Water is the source of life. Without water, there would be no life. Without people, there would be no country. Water pollution control is an ongoing process.

How to strengthen drinking water safety? The Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law revised in 2017 focused on strengthening drinking water safety. Drinking water safety involves the entire process from water sources to water supply companies to taps. Member Yuan Si asked, what measures will be taken to strengthen the protection of drinking water sources, and strengthen water quality monitoring and information disclosure of water sources, water purification, secondary water supply and user taps in accordance with the law?

Li Ganjie, Minister of the Ministry of Environment, said that since 2017, relevant departments have launched a special campaign to protect the environment of centralized drinking water sources across the country. In three years, about 10,000 problems have been rectified, creating a good foundation for the protection of drinking water sources.

Regarding the three major areas of water pollution, the first is to start with rural water pollution. The Ministry of Environment will work with relevant departments to clearly identify rural water sources with a capacity of thousands of tons and tens of thousands of people, and rectify the relevant problems next year. Second, we will encourage and support more places to establish horizontal ecological compensation mechanisms to jointly protect the environmental safety of cross-border and critical water sources. Third, we will continue to improve the disclosure of water quality monitoring information at drinking water sources.

Wang Menghui, Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, said that water supply companies will be further guided and urged to strengthen water quality testing capabilities and do a good job in publicizing water quality information. In addition, the National Health Commission is responsible for monitoring the quality of drinking water, formulating water quality standards, and conducting health risk assessments. Ma Xiaowei, Director of the National Health Commission, said that the construction of regional monitoring networks will be strengthened, monitoring work will be further implemented, and the ability to assess and judge water sample monitoring risks will be improved. At the same time, the water quality information reporting system will be improved and perfected, especially the disclosure of water quality information at the end of the water supply will be promoted to ensure the safety of drinking water for the people.

Three aspects of efforts to control agricultural and rural water pollution

The relevant leader pointed out that the construction of rural sewage treatment facilities is a shortcoming. He asked how to accelerate the construction of rural sewage treatment facilities in accordance with the law and ensure that these facilities are affordable, well-operated and sustainable? In the next step, rural water pollution prevention and control will focus on three aspects:

First, we will focus on the treatment of pollution in agricultural production, especially in livestock and poultry breeding. We will improve the standardization and scale of livestock and poultry breeding, and reduce manure and sewage discharge at the source. We will continue to promote the whole-county governance of 585 large livestock and poultry counties, and gradually cover large-scale farms in non-livestock counties, and strive to achieve full coverage this year. By 2020, the matching rate of manure and sewage treatment facilities in 110,000 large-scale farms will reach 100%, and the comprehensive utilization level of livestock and poultry manure and sewage will be increased to more than 75%.

Second, we will improve the rural living environment. We will implement rural toilet renovation, domestic sewage and garbage management, improve the appearance of villages, and reduce water pollution.

Third, explore and establish a long-term management and control mechanism. In terms of the management and maintenance of rural public infrastructure, it is necessary to raise management and maintenance funds through multiple channels, build diversified financial guarantees and long-term management and maintenance mechanisms. At the same time, enhance the enthusiasm of village collective economic organizations and farmers to participate, and support third-party entities to participate in the management and maintenance of governance facility construction and operation.

Finally, we need to speed up the process of filling the gaps in urban sewage pipe network construction.

During the law enforcement inspection, it was found that the urban sewage pipeline network had a lot of historical debts, and there was a big gap between the urban sewage collection rate and treatment rate, which resulted in the massive generation of rivers, lakes and black and smelly water bodies.

"Although our houses are well built and the city is beautiful, there is indeed a big gap in urban underground infrastructure," Wang Menghui responded. He said that this year, the three departments jointly issued the "Three-Year Action Plan for Improving the Quality and Efficiency of Urban Wastewater Treatment (2019-2021)", which clarified the three-year work goals and achieved the three basic eliminations in the built-up areas of cities at the prefecture level and above: basically eliminating the blank areas of domestic sewage collection and treatment facilities in old urban areas, urban villages and urban-rural junctions, basically eliminating domestic sewage direct discharge outlets, and basically eliminating black and smelly water bodies.

Next, we must earnestly implement the three-year action plan. First, we must guide local governments to compile urban infrastructure construction plans, clarify annual construction tasks, strengthen urban vertical management and control, and improve the systematization level of pipeline networks. Second, we must accelerate the construction and renovation of pipeline networks, especially in areas where pipeline networks are blank, and accelerate the renewal of old pipeline networks. Third, we must establish a long-term mechanism, establish a professional maintenance mechanism for pipeline networks, carry out inter-departmental law enforcement, and use some new technologies to supervise the operation of pipeline networks.

Gongyi Jiajinkou Zhengda Water Supply Materials Factory is proud to be the earliest and best water treatment material manufacturer in Henan. Any sewage filtered by our products will meet the water quality testing standards. Our company has its own processing plant for filter materials and chemicals, and everyone is welcome to visit us.