East China’s Jiangsu province has released the Implementation Opinions on Strengthening the Lake Chief System in a bid to establish a long-term system guarantee for water pollution prevention and control in 137 lakes across the province.
According to the Opinions, government officials will be hired as lake chiefs at provincial, city, county and township levels, and heads of provincial regions will be general chiefs that are responsible for all rivers and lakes in the region.
For large lakes that span across regions, the lake are required to be responsible for different parts of the water bodies and cooperate on management.
Responsibilities of the lake chiefs include water resource protection, pollution prevention and control, and ecological restoration. The lake chief system is linked to the performance evaluations of top officials whose job performance will be assessed and they will be held accountable if environmental damage occurs in the water bodies they take charge of.
With top officials now accountable as lake chiefs, the system will help to change the province’s industrial structure and better protect the environment.
China firstly appointed local government officials as river chiefs in 2007 to address pollution woes of a blue algae outbreak in Taihu Lake, Jiangsu Province.
The practice was later adopted in several regions rich in water resources to ensure strong enforcement of environmental policies and enhance coordination.
(Source: ourjiangsu.com)
