SHENZHEN plans to invest nearly 50 billion yuan (US$7.4 billion) this year to manage water pollution and will increase the amount to 120 billion yuan by 2020, the city’s pollution prevention and control command office said at a meeting Monday.

Shenzhen aims to clear up polluted and odorous river water by the end of this year to ensure that the water quality of major rivers across the city like the Maozhou River improve and that rivers such as the Guanlan, Shenzhen, Longgang and Pingshan rivers meet relevant standards, the meeting was told.

Treatment facilities are the key to handling sewage, the office said. As a result, a working plan specifies that a total of six water purification plants will be built and another 17 plants will be upgraded to make all facilities able to handle 6.55 million tons of sewage per day.

Additionally, Shenzhen will formulate a handbook of responsibilities for polluted and odorous water management to guarantee that all projects launch by the end of March and major projects are finished before December.

A pilot project of constructing a green lane extending a total of 5,000 kilometers will also be implemented. It is designed to make full use of ecological elements including lakes, rivers and mountains to promote the integrated management of water, the city and industry.

Last year, Shenzhen achieved a GDP of over 2.4 trillion yuan, up 7.6 percent over the previous year. With the rapid growth of the economy, Shenzhen has put ecological development at a core place and confirms this year is a decisive year in managing water pollution, according to a Xinhua report.

Various measures were issued last year to manage water pollution. A total of 159 rivers were included in the list of supervision, and it was required that at least 90 percent of these rivers be treated. The scale of this mission was over three times that of 2017, according to the local water pollution prevention department.

“I feel very honored to see that our city has such a good environment,” a resident living in Nanshan District told the Shenzhen Economic Daily on Monday.

According to the latest data, 146 polluted and odorous rivers have been treated, including the most polluted Maozhou River. The improvement of the Maozhou River received praise from the central environment supervision group, the report said.

Shenzhen spent 39.2 billion yuan on water management last year, an increase of 98 percent compared to 2017, which also broke a record, according to the city’s water bureau.

Water quality is closely related to people’s health. With the publication of national policies on water protection and pressure from the supervision of environmental departments, many cities in China have achieved results in this field.

(Wang Jingli)