Groundwater monitoring system 'three years away'

The mainland is considering revising its 20-year-old standards for groundwater and will launch a new network to monitor quality in three years, according to an official with the Ministry of Land and Resources.

Zhang Zuochen, a deputy head of the ministry-affiliated China Institute of Geo-Environment Monitoring, said a revision to the existing standards for groundwater quality had been drafted. Internal consultation among ministries would start soon, Zhang was quoted by the the 21st Century Business Herald as saying yesterday.

The nation is facing a worsening crisis over its groundwater as cities and farms in the arid north are forced to rely heavily on drawing water from underground.

Industrial and agricultural pollution is also putting pressure on the system, with latest official data showing nearly 60 per cent of groundwater is either polluted or heavily polluted.

But the full scale of the problem is difficult to discern because quality standards are outdated and monitoring remains insufficient.

By the end of last year, only 1.1 million square kilometers, or about 11 per cent of the national territory, was being monitored for groundwater quality, according to Zhang.