It was learned from the Yueyang Municipal Water Resources Bureau that as of the end of 2020, the three-year action plan for the ecological environment improvement of the Dongting Lake has been fully completed. This included consolidation and improvement of rural drinking water safety, river sand mining management, and ditches, ponds, and dams dredging.

In recent years, Hunan government has attached great importance to the ecological environment improvement of the Dongting Lake. The Hunan Provincial Water Resources Department has followed the unified arrangements of the CPC Hunan Provincial Committee and the People’s Government of Hunan Province and the requirements and tasks of the “Three-year Action for the Special Improvement of the Dongting Lake Ecological Environment (2018-2020)”, to perform responsibilities, strengthen measures, and promote the ecological environment improvement of the Dongting Lake.

The four cities of Yueyang, Changsha, Changde, and Yiyang have selected emergency and standby water sources and built 9 automatic water quality monitoring stations for drinking water sources. The Dongting Lake area has consolidated and improved the rural drinking water safety benefitting a population of 2,243,600 in three years. The task completion rate was 139%, the tap water penetration rate reached over 90%, and the rural water quality compliance rate in 2020 was 84.96%, an increase of 18.66 percentage points from the end of 2017.

The sand mining in waters such as the Dongting Lake Nature Reserve has been completely banned. The list of persons responsible for sand mining management in rivers has been announced step by step and section by section. The plan for sand mining has been completed, the annual mining plan issued, and the supervision and law enforcement of sand mining strengthened. More than 21,000 daily inspections of sand mining in rivers and lakes were carried out, and 779 targeted campaigns were made, and sand mining in river channels became more standardized and orderly.

A total of 64,200 kilometers of ditches and 112,000 ponds and dams dredging were completed in three years. The planned tasks were overfulfilled and a long-term management and protection mechanism was established. The connectivity of the ditches and the storage capacity of the ponds and dams were restored, and the ecological environment of the water in the dikes was improved. An ecological living water network of ditches, ponds, and dams that can be used for drought irrigation and flood drainage has been established.

Source: en.yueyang.gov.cn