Bad Quality of China's Groundwater

Groundwater at 60% of China's Monitored Sites Poor In Quality

Water at close to 60% of the sites monitored for groundwater quality across China was found to be bad, official data indicated, results that experts said were not comprehensive as the area covered and the variety of indices were limited.

According to data from the Ministry of Land and Resources, the quality of water was poor to extremely bad at 59.6% of the 4,778 locations monitored for groundwater quality in 2013, results that have raised concerns about the overall quality of groundwater across the country.

Some experts, however, expressed doubts about whether these figures could truly reflect groundwater quality across the country, given the limited area covered under the study and the limited array of indices used.

Zhang Zuochen, deputy head of the China Institute of Geo-Environment Monitoring, called into question the practice of basing evaluation of the general conditions nationwide on figures gathered from individual spots.

The figures might only reflect the quality of water near the spots monitored instead of the wider area surrounding the spots, Zhang said.

By the end of 2013, 16,570 sites around China had been monitored for groundwater, covering an area of 1.1 million square kilometers.

The recent study was proposed under a plan compiled by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Ministry of Land and Resources, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Ministry of Water Resources to treat polluted groundwater in northern China.

According to the plan, groundwater under the North China Plain is polluted with excessive levels of cadmium, chromium and lead.

Wang Hao, a research director at the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, stated that polluted water was found on the ground and discharged wastewater had contaminated groundwater under the plain.

Wang further said that earlier pollutants used to be non-organic, such as nitrates, but now refractory organics that lead to deformities have become more prevalent.

There are more than 100 pollutants in the groundwater under Beijing and other parts of Hebei province.

China's National Development and Reform Commission approved on July 22 a proposal by the Ministry of Land and Resources and the Ministry of Water Resources to monitor groundwater across China.

Zhang said the project will be completed three years from now.

Source: Want China Times

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