“Groundwater pollution prevention plan for North China Plain” received the approval by the State Council in early March. As an industry leader of contaminated site and groundwater remediation, CECDADI received an exclusive interview by H2O-Water website, and gave professional insights about the status of groundwater pollution, prevention system construction and industrial development trends. Related report reads as follows:
Groundwater is an important constituent of water resources, which supplies drinking water for 70% of the population and irrigation water for 40% of the farmland in China. The current situation of groundwater pollution in China is grim, and has extended from point pollution to areapollution; therefore, the groundwater pollution prevention has received highly attention from the state. During the two sessions, Li Guoying, the vice minister of Ministry of Water Resources, expressed that the Ministry of Water Resources together with Environmental Protection and Land resources will complete the investigation and assessment of groundwater pollution by the end of 2015;thereby to promote the national monitoring mechanism of groundwater, implement the comprehensive monitoring of drinking water source area, and restore the groundwater quality systematically.
Four pollution sources threaten the safety of groundwater
One-third of the water resources in China are groundwater; however, experts claimed that 90% of the urban groundwater has been polluted, with 60% suffering from serious contamination. As an important source of drinking water, the safety of groundwater environment is essential; however, it has been threatened by four pollution sources now. The four pollution sources are pollution from city life, industry, agriculture and heavy metal & radiation.
Strengthen the prevention and control system
"National Groundwater Pollution Prevention Plan (2011-2020)" reads that by 2015, the state should initially control groundwater pollution, establish a comprehensive monitoring system of groundwater and improve the quality of the groundwater sources for centralized urban water supply. However,some of companies with wastewater regular discharge lack environmental awareness, which results in the unregulated discharges and dumping of the waste water and sewage.
To change the worsening pollution status, the state should spare no effort to strengthen supervision of groundwater pollution: 1)Formulate laws, regulations, management evaluation and supervision system, so as to normalize in the legislative and practical level; 2)Strictly control the pollution from industry and civil life; 3)Strengthen the construction of emergency response and warning system; 4)Conduct long-term monitoring of soil and groundwater in key pollution sources and industry zones based on the principle-“Combine prevention with remediation, and focus on the prevention”; 5)Strengthen the media publicity and publicsupervision.
Intensify efforts to promote the remediation of groundwater ecological environment
According to the data of “China Water Industry Market Research Report (2013 edition)” (edit by H2O-China website), the market of water environment remediation has been growing quickly from 2012 onwards, and reached 3.3 billion which increased more than three times compared with 2011. The release of policies and plans has played a great role in promoting the market of water environment remediation launch. However, due to the complexity of groundwater contamination, remediation is still difficult: 1)The laws and regulations related to groundwater is inadequate; 2)The state didn’t form a real risk-based monitoring and remediation system of groundwater contamination, as well as the index system and assessment methods suitable for China’s situation; 3)The groundwater remediation also lacks of basic data and the technology; 4) Meanwhile, the identification of main liable parties is very hard, and the remediation projects always have characteristics of long invest cycle and huge total invest. All of these results in the capacity of groundwater remediation is weak now, and have not formed into an industrial scale yet.
In the future, the groundwater remediation market in China will focus on the control of pollution sources, and combine the treatment with remediation. Leading by the enterprises specializing in groundwater remediation, the state will develop the pollution investigation, monitoring and prevention system suitable for China’s situation, build demonstration projects of groundwater remediation, construct groundwater pollution prevention system suitable for specific areas, release industry-related guidelines and regulatory framework, and gradually promote the construction of groundwater ecological environment in China.