Prof. Youkuan ZHANG

ykzhang@nju.edu.cn

 

    It has been recognized that in the period of “Eleventh Five-Year Plan”, the following are the major water pollution problems in the Huai River Basin: serious point source pollution, more predominant non-point source pollution, lack of natural baseflow, existence of a large number of dams, part of the rivers and lakes being the main passing channel as well as water storage for the east route of China’s South-North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP) as the basin experiences rapid economic development. In dealing with these problems, the Huai River project focuses on cost-effective pollution load reduction techniques of heavy polluting industries and agricultural non-point source pollution control, integrated water quality– quantity utilization, restoration of the degraded wetlands in the Nansi Lake, and key techniques and demonstration for decision-making of water quality improvement and integrated management of water environment. The project aims to 1) achieve breakthroughs in techniques of wastewater treatment techniques of major polluting industries and the basin’s pollution control techniques; 2) to substantially reduce pollution load in key industries and the basin, 3) to reduce probability of large-scale unexpected pollution events in the basin, 4) to protect water quality in the east route of the SNWTP by raising the water in the Nansi Lake to Type Ⅲ water. The results from this project will build a solid foundation for further effort in dealing with the water pollution of the basin in China’s “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” and “Thirteenth Five-Year Plan”.

 

   Up to now, significant progress has been made in various aspects of the project. The main progresses include: 1) Selection and establishment of key demonstration projects and allocation of part of the matching fund (some of the demonstration projects have almost been finished), 2) More than 20 small-scale and middle-scale pilot tests have been carried out ; 3) More than 10 patents have been applied and a number of scientific papers have been published, and 4) Two software packages have been developed and one field working station has been constructed.