Groundwater pollution grows alarming

Published on June 3, 2013 15:15 by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Government

Groundwater quality in nearly 60 percent of monitoring sites in 198 cities has been measured as poor, according to a report released by the Ministry of Land and Resources Saturday.

Among a total of nearly 5,000 monitoring sites in these cities, some 40 percent of them have groundwater of poor quality, while it is extremely poor in nearly 17 percent of them, said the report.

Comparing previous monitoring results, the comprehensive quality of groundwater remains stable, with the frequency of poor quality groundwater at above 55 percent for the third year running.

A senior official from the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Wu Xiaoqing, said at a press conference in June last year that among 4,727 groundwater monitoring sites in 200 cities, the water quality of 45 percent has been excellent, good or relatively good, but that the other 55 percent has been poor or very poor, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Some 60 percent of cities rely on groundwater to supply their demand, Ma Jun, the director of a Beijing-based non-government organization, Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE), told the Global Times, adding that in arid areas of northern China, it is common for farmers to irrigate their fields using shallow water sources, which are more prone to pollution than deep aquifers.

"Besides drinking water that mainly comes from deep aquifers, groundwater of poor quality used for poultry breeding or irrigation poses problems for food safety and human health," said Ma.

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