A joint statement issued earlier this month by six ministries, including the Ministry of Environment, calls for the sewage treatment rate and investment in sewage treatment to be increased to solve China’s growing water pollution problem.
The environment ministry said 75% of China’s lakes and rivers are fighting eutrophication (an increase in the concentration of chemical nutrients in an ecosystem), and 90% of the urban water supply has been severely polluted by 2009. Industrial sewage alone is 30.6 billion tons a year.
A total of 61 cities, counties and large towns have no sewage treatment facility and they discharge untreated wastewater into the environment.
Global Times reported Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, as saying, "If we don’t treat sewage seriously, water pollution would become a great burden in water safety, agriculture and other economic development."