Rural water pollution has become a persistent disease

In recent years, the situation of rural water environment is grim. Livestock and poultry breeding and domestic waste have become an important source of water pollution, which has aroused widespread concern in the society. The prevention and control of water pollution in rural areas is both important and difficult in many places. The Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Water pollution issued by the State Council this year focuses on promoting the prevention and control of pollution in agriculture and rural areas and the prevention and control of pollution in livestock and poultry breeding. What is the difficulty in the prevention and control of water pollution in rural areas? is there an effective solution? The reporter followed the "China Environmental Protection Century Travel" interview team of the Environmental Protection Committee of the National people's Congress to Sichuan for on-the-spot interviews.

Rural water pollution has become a stubborn disease

In Banqiao Village, Danling County, Meishan City, Sichuan Province, almost every household raises pigs. Villager Liu Huaiyu raises about 200 pigs, which is only enough to reach the local medium scale. Pig manure disposal is an age-old problem for her. The amount of feces in the farm is about four barrels a day. In the past, part of pig manure was used to fertilize their own orchards, but there is still a large amount of manure left with nowhere to be disposed of, and everyone casually discharges it into ditches, rivers and lakes, and the nearby waters stink. Liu Huaiyu said.

Livestock and poultry pollution not only pollutes the water body and destroys the environment, but also harms nearby residents. Song Chengquan, a farmer in Danling Town, Danling County, told the Economic Daily that a few years ago, he had ambitions to operate fish ponds. He originally invested 150000 yuan because a family upstream raised three pigs and failed to deal with livestock and poultry droppings. The water of the whole fish pond was polluted, lost money before seeing profits, and suffered huge losses.

In recent years, with the disorderly increase of livestock and poultry breeding in some areas, the discharge of waste seriously exceeds the capacity of water consumption. The latest survey data of pollution sources released by the Ministry of Environmental Protection show that the chemical oxygen demand and ammonia nitrogen emissions of China's livestock and poultry breeding industry have reached 11.48 million tons and 650000 tons respectively, accounting for 45 percent and 25 percent of the country's total emissions, respectively, which are 3.23 times and 2.3 times that of industrial sources respectively. The chemical oxygen demand and ammonia nitrogen emissions of livestock and poultry farms and professional farmers in 24 provinces account for more than 90% of the total emissions from local agricultural sources.

In addition, antibiotics, hormones, copper, iron, chromium, zinc and other substances in livestock and poultry feed additives, with the return of manure to the field, lead to environmental pollution of soil and groundwater, indirectly decline the quality of grain, vegetables and other agricultural products, and damage people's health. Relevant studies have shown that the pollution radius of a pig farm with an annual output of 100000 heads can reach 5 km.

Sichuan is not only an important water conservation area and main catchment area of the Yangtze River and Yellow River, but also a major agricultural province and breeding province, with serious livestock and poultry breeding, rural domestic pollution and non-point source pollution, while urban sewage treatment and supporting facilities construction, especially the township sewage treatment facilities are not perfect and the operation is unstable, which leads to the outstanding pollution of total phosphorus in the river basin. Exceeding the standard of total phosphorus has become a prominent problem of water environment in Sichuan Province, and it is one of the main directions of comprehensive improvement of water environment in Sichuan Province in the future.

It is not easy to control water pollution in rural areas. In the past, in the prevention and control of water pollution in rural areas of Sichuan, various localities thought of many ways, but the financial investment was huge, but with little effect, because the cost of water pollution treatment was too high, and the financial funds were limited, in many rural areas, water control has become a heavy burden for local governments.

"in addition, rural water control still has to face the problem of who will deal with it. There are many pollution sources, the treatment force is weak, and the responsibility for governance falls on the government. The government has to take full responsibility for the prevention and control of water pollution, and often falls into the embarrassment of being unable to achieve the normalization of water pollution control." Gu Weifen, deputy director of the office of Danling County Urban and Rural Environment Comprehensive improvement headquarters, said.

For some rural areas, they do not have enough understanding of the prevention and control of water pollution, lack of effective supervision measures, do not form a set of water control system and work pattern of the party and government in counties, townships, and villages, and do not do enough to prevent and control water pollution in rural areas. even "fishing for three days and drying the net for two days" has even more connived at farmers to discharge livestock and poultry pollution at will. therefore, water control in rural areas has become an unbreakable chronic disease.

Introduce social forces to control water

Today, in Danling County, Meishan City, there are professional water control teams in every village, some specializing in garbage disposal and some helping to solve the problem of livestock and poultry pollution. Song Chengquan is the person in charge of this kind of water control team.

Song Chengquan has been "involved" with water pollution since the fish ponds were polluted by livestock and poultry. "Water pollution control is too important!" Song Chengquan said. He specially went to participate in the bidding of the town manure machine service team, and won from more than a dozen competitors to set up a professional service team specializing in dealing with pollutants from livestock and poultry farms.

"Danling recruits a professional service team to be responsible for the transport of dry manure and excess biogas liquid, and villages and towns adopt competitive bidding to set up a township manure machine service team, and the county finance gives each team an annual subsidy of 100000 yuan. The bid-winning manure machine service team signed a contract agreement with villages and towns to be responsible for the collection and transportation of dry manure and excess biogas liquid in their villages and towns, so as to put an end to pollution in livestock and poultry farming." Song Shili, director of Danling County Environmental Protection Bureau, said.

In the practice of water control, Sichuan Province has gradually realized that the government alone cannot supervise and stop the discharge of agricultural pollution. The introduction of market-oriented professional team to attract more social forces to participate in water control has become a new idea of water control in rural areas of Sichuan.

Song Chengquan's service team not only has uniform clothing, but also has its own generators, pipes and other equipment. The team members are skilled in handling and looking quite professional. They come to collect biogas slurry, farmers need to pay 3 yuan per cubic meter of biogas slurry, and farmers pay 30 yuan per cubic meter to fertilize in the field. Through market-oriented operation, livestock manure, which was originally regarded as a source of pollution, has achieved a value of 33 yuan in one smoke and one release, and the service team can pull 9 to 11 cars a day, with an income of about 800 yuan.

"since the introduction of professional treatment, the pollution of rural ditches and ponds and canals has been greatly reduced, and the former smelly water rivers have also become clear." Song Chengquan said. He led a team of three people in charge of seven villages. Early in the morning, they collect livestock and poultry manure from farmers and pour them into the fields, which not only reduces ditch pollution, but also allows growers to use farm manure at a low cost.

Sichuan Province uses the same idea to deal with rural domestic waste. In Danling County, after the preliminary classification of garbage by farmers, the contractor will classify and dispose of it again. "in this way, the amount of garbage collection can be reduced by 80%. And the operating cost is greatly reduced, the investment of one-time facilities is saved by 73%, and the annual operating cost is saved by 88%, but the governance effect is not reduced at all. " Gu Weifen, deputy director of the office of Danling County Urban and Rural Environment Comprehensive improvement headquarters, said.

"adjust measures to local conditions, villagers' autonomy, and market operation. Relying on the power of the market and having a professional team, the government has come out of the predicament of flood control, the pressure of financial investment has been reduced, the rural areas have been normalized and cleaned, and the water environment has been effectively improved, thus achieving a win-win situation for both ecology and economy. " Gu Weifen said.

The "tentacles" of supervision do not leave a dead corner

Zhou Chaoyi is the young female mayor of Xinminchang town. Besides this, there is another identity, that is, the first person responsible for environmental protection in the town. In the event of a water quality safety accident or large and small water pollution problems in the area, the first person to be held accountable is the head of the town. "now the responsibility on our shoulders is even heavier, and I feel a lot of pressure. nowadays, the work of water environment monitoring is so tight that we dare not neglect it at all." Zhou Chaoyi said.

In the office building of the Xinminchang town government, a special environmental protection office has been set up especially for environmental protection work, and the telephone number for reporting environmental violations is prominently posted at the door of the office. As the first responsible person for environmental protection, Zhou Chaoyi has environmental protection liaison officers in all the seven villages and one community under his jurisdiction. This inspection team divides the responsible areas in accordance with the principle of village territory and defines their responsibilities. Inspections of drinking water sources, industrial pollution sources, domestic pollution sources, and rural non-point source pollution in the areas under their jurisdiction are carried out every day. The town water source inspection office is responsible for organizing and carrying out the assessment work and reporting the situation every month.

"the water quality here is very good. In the past, ordinary people washed clothes and vegetables in the river, which would pollute the water. Now, in order to protect the water quality, we have set up a protective net, prohibited the pollution of water sources, carried out cross-section regulation, and there can be no accumulation of garbage in the river. There can be no silt accumulation in the riverbed, and sundries cannot float on the river surface, and inspectors will stop them in time when similar pollution problems are found." Zhou Chaoyi said. Since the establishment of town-level environmental protection agencies and village protection focal points, the "tentacles" of environmental monitoring have been extended to every piece of land, and Xinminchang town has formed a supervision network system with horizontal to edge, vertical to bottom and full coverage.

Like Xinminchang Town, all 317 townships and streets in Chengdu have set up environmental protection agencies, which have been extended to villages and communities. Chengdu has become the first vice-provincial city in the country to achieve standardization, systematization and full coverage of environmental protection management in the whole country. it has realized that the environmental protection work has "taken root" at the grass-roots level. Since 2011, Chengdu has selected and hired 1146 specially invited environmental supervisors from provincial and municipal deputies to the National people's Congress, members of the Chinese people's political Consultative Conference and citizens who are enthusiastic about environmental protection, to play a role in social supervision. It is this kind of system innovation that has opened up the last kilometer of water environment regulation.

"Supervision is not superficial. In order to put rural water pollution control into practice, Sichuan Province requires local governments at all levels to bring water environment quality targets into the scope of target assessment and take effective measures to promote them. We will be punished for ineffective prevention and control of water pollution here. " Zhou Chaoyi said.

It is understood that Chengdu, Sichuan Province has implemented a cross-section withholding system since 2012. A total of 34 assessment sections have been set up in the main rivers, withholding funds in accordance with the rules for districts (cities) and counties whose water quality exceeds the standard, with a total of 70.196 million yuan withheld by 2014, which is specially used for water environment control.

Each responsible pollution control system makes the prevention and control of water pollution in rural areas no longer "on paper", but as an important daily work at the grass-roots level, through the coordination and dispatching of administrative forces at all levels, the vast rural areas of Sichuan have gradually restored a good ecological environment of clean rivers and green fish swimming on the banks.

"at present, except that all township environmental protection offices have been established in Chengdu and Mianyang has started to establish township environmental protection institutes, the construction of township environmental protection institutions in other places has not yet been started. The construction of township environmental protection institutions in Sichuan has just started, and the next step will continue to promote, and will further strengthen the township environmental supervision force. " He Lvzhang, deputy secretary general of the Sichuan provincial government, said.