China announces groundwater clean-up and management plans

China is to start work on cleaning up its contaminated groundwater, the country's government has announced. Many areas throughout China are heavily reliant upon groundwater and throughout the North China Plains the majority of drinking water is sourced from groundwater. Unfortunately, this area also contains high levels of contamination.

The Chinese government has announced that works will soon begin to clean-up the contaminated groundwater in the North China Plains and to manage any further pollution. Reports have found that much of the groundwater throughout China contains high levels of fertilisers, pesticides and industrial waste; making it unsuitable for consumption. Other contaminants include irrigation water, domestic waste and petrochemical by-products, which are putting 400 Chinese cities - out of around 655 - at risk as they are completely reliant on groundwater for their drinking water.

It is possible that the water clean-up procedure will be an expensive one, especially as many of the chemicals that have been found in the groundwater can take years to eradicate. Doctor Sun Ge, a research hydrologist at the US Department of Agriculture's Forest Service Southern Research Station, has suggested that there is a possibility that a total clean up of the country's groundwater may not be entirely possible because of the persistence of these chemicals.

The announcement of the clean-up plans comes after an investigation was launched in 2006, which found that the groundwater throughout the North China Plains is possibly contaminated beyond repair. The Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources has been investigating the pollution levels for six years in order to put a plan in place and has now announced its intentions to begin a mass clean-up.    

The report on the groundwater contamination has not been made public, but academic research - published in the Journal of Jilin University - found that around 35.5 per cent of samples taken from shallow groundwater throughout China were contaminated. The research - performed by Doctor Zhang Zhaoji, hydrogeologist at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences' Institute of Hydrology and Environmental Geology - is in line with a previous government report that revealed 41 of the monitoring sites throughout China registered low water quality.