The roadmap of groundwater pollution control in China

At present, China is faced with unoptimistic status of groundwater environmental quality, which calls for groundwater pollution control at the earliest. By summarizing experience in the U. S., EU, Taiwan and Japan, it's found that the commencement time of groundwater pollution control in developed countries and regions all lags behind that of surface water control; however, relatively good guarantee has been made in terms of standards of laws and regulations, institutional mechanisms, monitoring network, supporting funds, etc., which has forcefully promoted the task of groundwater pollution control. As far as China is concerned, the task of groundwater pollution control remains in its infancy and is urgently needed to carry out investigation, norm construction and demonstrations. The 12th Five-year period serves as an important turning point for groundwater pollution control. Therefore, we try to analyze the problems from scientific, technical and managerial aspects, and depict our roadmap of groundwater pollution control strategies as follows: to clarify and devise "three stage goals" of groundwater pollution control strategies, namely, short-medium-long-term while propelling "three co-ordinations" in soil, surface water and groundwater pollution control; based on the requirements of the planning, to implement "three zonings" for groundwater pollution control strategies, and to divide groundwater pollution control units, and prevention units and general protection units; to focus on "two links" between, regional and site groundwater pollution control, and to combine regional groundwater pollution control with large-scale basin water pollution control so as to curb deteriorating groundwater quality.