China promises safe drinking water for farmers
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-10-27 11:00
China will complete a pilot project in the next five years aimed at
protecting drinking water sources in rural areas, authorities said.
By 2010, 600 water source environmental protection projects will be completed
to fight water pollution in rural China, according to an environment protection
plan for the countryside released by the State Environmental Protection
Administration (SEPA) Thursday.
Pilot projects will be run in areas where the drinking water source is
seriously polluted and poses a health risk to peasants living on the water, the
plan says.
China has more than 3,100 drinking water sources and 5,716 areas are
demarcated as protection zones.
More than 300 million Chinese peasants living in the countryside drink
unsanitary water. Only 66 percent of rural China's drinking water is up to
sanitation standards.
In the first six months of this year, 11 major accidents polluted drinking
water sources. They included a chemical leak from an overturned truck on a
highway in southwest China's Chongqing, a serious hydrochloric acid leak from a
truck in Zhejiang province and the pollution of a drinking water well in
Yangquan in north China's Shanxi province.
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