It has been a reality that many rivers in China are no longer suitable for fish or human consumption the crisis concerns not only surface water but also ground water. On November 22, 2021 Chinese government issued the first groundwater regulation known as regulations on ground water management effective December 1, 2021.
This news has aroused the attention of the public when the Chinese government starts to address a problem it’s usually a very serious one at the press conference for the regulation Chinese.
Officials admitted the 2/3 of China’s more than 30 provinces have different degrees of excessive ground water extraction and some areas even mind deep ground water northern China is worse in terms of excessive groundwater use over exploitation of groundwater will lead to a series of problems such as ground water level decline depletion of aquifers depletion of water sources ground subsidence shrinking of rivers and lakes, seawater intrusion and ecological degradation.
At the press conference the Chinese ministry of water resources acknowledge these little facts such as the pollution of ground water in China is significant. Urban sewage industrial waste water in agricultural surface pollution and water pollution groundwater renewal is slow making over exploitation and pollution problems difficult to manage and remedy.
China is a country with a big water shortage the internationally recognized alert line for water stress is 1700 m³ per year per capita the threshold for water scarcity is 1000 m³ per year per capita and the extreme scarcity is 500 m³ per year.
China’s current per capita water resources are about 2000 m³ per year but 80% of the water resources are in the south. China’s water crisis keeps growing in the last 25 years. 28,000 rivers have disappeared, ground water levels are dropping by as much as 1 to 3 m per year causing local ground substance of 11 cm per year in parts of Beijing yellow River or the mother river of China that supplied water to Chinese people for thousands of years now flows at 1/10 of what it did in the 1940s and it is frequently out of the flow the lack of water is causing more inconvenient to people’s daily lives as the water for washing up is only available for one hour a day.
So how serious is the pollution of China surface water major accidents such as crude oil spills or overflows can bring about series water pollution which happens. .
Over the years with the rapid growth of China’s modernization and infrastructure construction the water demand has also grown the treatment of water resources hasn’t been properly monitored by the government at all levels in China, no matter how companies have polluted water, the penalties are minimal because the local government can’t let the companies go bankrupt, if the companies go bankrupt thanks can hardly recover their loans and government officials at all levels will also lose the vault from where they make profits.
Fregata Space is able to detect China’s polluted water by applying the script: “DOC (dissolved organic carbon) is a component of great importance in natural waters, because it performs both biotic and abiotic functions and its production can be enhanced by high rates of plant productivity. In water sources it comes from decaying natural organic matter and synthetic chemical compounds.”
