East China’s Jiangsu province has been rated excellent in the country’s strictest water resources management for the fourth year in a row, thanks to its efforts for the promotion of implementing the water-saving action and the construction of water ecological civilization.
In recent years, Jiangsu has continued to carry out special water-saving activities in the eight high-water-consuming industries such as power and chemical industries and the dual control project on the total amount of water used and water intensity by issuing regional water use plans in accordance with the annual plan in details so as to come up with a rigid constraint.
In 2017, the province’s regional GDP increased by 7.2% from the previous year but the total amount of water used by the whole society was 4.86 billion square meters lower than the control target, equivalent to saving the amount of water in Taihu Lake.
In order to further improve the ecological environment of rivers and lakes, Jiangsu has fully implemented the river chief and lake chief system, strengthened the management of water function areas, the management of sewage outlets in rivers, and incorporated water quality standards for water function areas into the province’s ecological civilization assessment indicators.
Through the implementation of the province's ecological rivers and lakes action plan, Jiangsu has created a model for the management and protection of rivers and lakes such as Pan'an Lake, Maling River and Baima Lake. In 2017, 81.6% of the important rivers and lakes water function areas in the province measured up to the water quality standards with all the indicators surpassing the national tasks.
