Just 20 per cent of China’s groundwater fit for humans

More than 80 per cent of the groundwater in China’s river basins is not fit for human consumption, according to data from the country’s water authorities, although officials insist that drinking water was still safe.

Environmental anxieties in China have tended to focus on smog and air pollution, but the latest grim environmental analysis to emerge shows water quality may be the more pressing problem.

Water quality featured strongly in the 13th Five Year Plan issued after the National People’s Congress last month.

The government has introduced an action plan for water, similar to the Atmospheric Pollution Law, which was passed in 2015 and came into force on January 1st. The Water Pollution Law is expected to be passed this year.

In its monthly report published on Monday, and using data from January, China’s Ministry of Water Resources said that of 2,103 monitored wells, water from 691, or 32.9 per cent, was defined as Class IV water, which means suitable only for industrial and agricultural use while water from 994 wells, or 47.3 per cent, was Class V, or unsuitable for human use. Together this means that more than 80 per cent of the water is classified as not fit for human consumption.

The report is based on monitoring of watersheds in some of China’s major river systems, including the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, and the 2,103 wells are located in the Songliao Basin in the northeast, the Huang-huai-hai Plain in eastern China and basins and plains in Shanxi Province and northwest China.

Nearly 70 per cent of Chinese people drink water from underground sources.

The chief problem is contamination by nitrates, while in some areas water is contaminated by heavy metals and toxic organic pollutions.

“The report shows that the issue of groundwater quality is very severe, since the samples are relatively wide-ranging, which can at least cover 30 to 50 per cent of China,” Mu Jianxin of the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research told the Global Times newspaper.

Ada Kong, the toxics campaign manager for Greenpeace in East Asia, said the situation was much more serious in regions that depend heavily on groundwater for their water, like the northeastern provinces and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

“The pollution to groundwater will threaten local people’s health and contaminate local crops. It could also cause a geological hazard as the overuse of groundwater could cause land subsidence,” Ms Kong said.

However, the government insisted that drinking water would remain safe.

Chen Mingzhong, director of the department of water resources under the Ministry of Water Resources, told a news conference on Monday in response to the report that “the quality of drinking water is generally good,” as drinking water is mainly taken from deep groundwater, which is different from the samples that were measured.

There was also some debate about the levels of contamination depending on the depth of the groundwater, as the deeper the groundwater, the less likely it is to be contaminated.

“Shallow groundwater flows through cities, making it easier to be contaminated by agricultural non-point pollution, industrial waste and landfills,” Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs told the National Business Daily.