Half a month ago, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment once again sent a clear message of "strong supervision".

Covering 25 provinces, municipalities, and nearly 3800 locations across the country, involving seven major special contents including urban black and odorous water treatment, protection of drinking water sources, cracking down on the import of "foreign garbage", and the rectification of the "three phosphorus" in the Yangtze River, the "Notice on Carrying out the 2019 Ecological Environment Protection Coordination and Strengthening Supervision (Round) Work" issued in an urgent form carries a new round of ecological environment supervision and has been implemented.

Unlike before, this round of green storm has been renamed as "supervision". While strengthening the improvement of environmental quality, it will also effectively supervise the implementation and effectiveness of various measures, and enhance the pertinence and effectiveness of environmental supervision. 92 on-site teams independently carry out on-site supervision, and the entry time has been changed from half a month to no more than 10 days. Each province, autonomous region, and municipality has also developed customized plans: different supervision contents, more or less, no longer "grasping every eyebrow and beard". As for the provinces in the Yangtze River Basin, the focus will be on "clean-up actions" and "three phosphorus" remediation.

Half a month later, the above-mentioned special action submitted impressive results. At the regular press conference held by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in May, spokesperson Liu Youbin pointed out that more than 5200 environmental problems were found during the investigation, and each one was put on credit. It is worth mentioning that over 1000 black and odorous water bodies have welcomed a new round of "consultations". As an upgraded version of the urban black and odorous water special action, provinces including those along the Yangtze River Economic Belt, Shanxi, and Liaoning have become the focus of this supervision. According to the implementation plan for the battle against urban black and odorous water bodies, the elimination rate of black and odorous water bodies in built-up areas of prefecture level cities will reach over 90% within the next year.

The main goal for the next two years is to solve the problem of black and odorous water bodies in prefecture level cities, and by the end of 2019, this governance target will be close to 80%, "said Zhang Bo, Director of the Water Ecology and Environment Department of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Public information shows that unpleasant or uncomfortable sensations have become the main basis for judging black and odorous water bodies. To cancel the registration of black and odorous water bodies, both hard and soft indicators need to be met: not only do the four water quality indicators meet the requirements, but also a survey questionnaire with a public satisfaction rate of over 90% and a valid number of over 100 must be completed.

According to publicly available information, as of the end of 2018, over 95% of nearly 1000 black and odorous water bodies in 36 key cities have been eliminated or basically "de capped". Nearly 96.89% of provincial-level and above industrial parks have built centralized sewage treatment facilities and installed automatic online monitoring devices. Compared to air pollution, the treatment of water pollution is more complex and requires more money. In terms of funding, the cumulative investment directly used for the treatment of black and odorous water bodies during the same period exceeded 112.5 billion yuan.

How to remove the cap from the water body? If there is no "tailor-made", it is like prescribing cold medicine to the river, a "patient" who has been suffering from colds all year round, but not finding out why it often catches colds. Based on this, the "Guidelines for Urban Black and Stinky Water Body Remediation Work" points out the basic technical route: source control and pollution interception+internal source treatment. The essence of black and odorous water bodies is the direct discharge of sewage and garbage into the environment, and the root cause is the insufficient urban environmental infrastructure. Due to a large number of historical debts, there are not only funding issues in the construction of sewage networks, but also demolition, making the situation of black and odorous water body remediation more complex.

More noteworthy is that there is still a question mark on whether the treatment of black and odorous water bodies has truly been completed. How to prevent the problem of black and odorous rebound in water bodies? The industry generally believes that black and odorous odors are in the water and originate from the shore. That is to say, the focus of governance is on controlling sources and intercepting pollution. The ultimate goal of treating black and odorous water bodies is to restore river ecology. Industry insiders emphasize that it is difficult to achieve black and odorous water body treatment without controlling the source and intercepting pollution. No matter how well the interception and dredging are done, if the self purification capacity of the water body is not significantly improved, the water body cannot be truly treated successfully.

For the seven iconic environmental battles, including the treatment of urban black and odorous water bodies, more extensive and in-depth supervision is still on the way. In the second half of 2019, we will also organize and carry out the second phase of coordinated and strengthened supervision, and verify the rectification situation one by one, "Liu Youbin revealed. In the first half of the year, more emphasis was placed on identifying problems, and how to rectify them was handed over to the local authorities. In the second half of the year, more attention was paid to the rectification of the problems raised in the previous round. And it should be staggered with the time and steps of the central ecological environment protection inspection.