Anji implements innovation in dealing with water pollution

Clean water resources are what every local government is longing for in China. In Anji county, Zhejiang province, innovative methods are employed to deal with water pollution.

Yang Shaojun, director of Anji Bureau of Water Resources, said that to improve water quality, scientific technologies are to be used in every line of this work.

"Take reservoirs for example. Preserving what we have achieved now is far from maintaining the good water quality of a reservoir system," he said. "We picked several plantations from dozens of candidates which can both survive during drought seasons and flood seasons."

The bureau also turned rice paddy fields around the reservoirs into wetlands, which effectively prevent polluted water from washing into the reservoirs during flood seasons.

As the only village located at the upper reaches of Fenghuang reservoir, Shuangyi village is a beautiful small village. To guide the villagers to protect local water resources, the bureau built a memorial pavilion of the village's only running spring to advertise the importance of protecting this spring.

Huang Dawei, head of Jingxi village, said he still remembered the time when water quality was bad there.

"At that time, few tourists came to our village because the environment was not satisfactory," he said. "With the efforts of the local government telling the villagers the importance of protecting water resources, our village is now a hot tourism spot."

Yang said education alone cannot solve problems once and for all. The core solution is to think of alternatives for the villagers.

"Instead of telling them to stop using chemical fertilizers, we found them plants that do not require the use of such fertilizers," he said.

With efforts of both local government and villagers, Anji is a role model in protecting water resources.