We got news from the National Water Resources Department Directors' Meeting: In order to let farmers drink assured water as soon as possible, the central government has invested 28 billion yuan this year to solve the drinking water safety problem of more than 70 million rural people and exceed the annual target task. This means that in the first two years of the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan", 130 million farmers and 18 million rural school teachers and students with unsafe drinking water were allowed to drink assured water, completing 40.6% of the tasks in the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan".

        According to the relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Water Resources, the rural drinking water safety project is related to the health and life safety of hundreds of millions of farmers. The No. 1 document of the Central Committee in 2011 clearly pointed out that the problem of rural drinking water insecurity will be basically solved by 2015. The investment has been strong and the construction has accelerated. The central government has invested 48 billion yuan in rural drinking water safety in the past two years. At present, the drinking water problems in villages in arsenic-affected areas, schistosomiasis-affected areas, and other wading villages in severely ill-affected areas have all been resolved, and villages in moderate-to-severe fluorosis areas have basically been resolved.

        If the project is successfully built, it must be affordable and long-term benefited by farmers. Innovating mechanisms in various regions to ensure the long-term operation of the project requires not only coverage rate, but also water supply guarantee rate and water quality qualification rate, the implementation of large-scale water plant construction, the promotion of centralized water supply engineering methods, and the extension of urban and rural water supply networks to the countryside. Establish a county-level rural drinking water project operation and maintenance fund, with a total of 440 million yuan. At the same time, with the support of relevant central departments, preferential policies on electricity and land use for rural drinking water safety projects have been introduced this year. Preliminary calculations can reduce project operating costs by 13%-21%.

        (Source: Ministry of Water Resources)