Nanming River reclamation pronounced major success

The comprehensive reclamation program for the Nanming River – which flows through Guiyang, capital city of Southwest China's Guizhou province – has won major praise from the Focus Report, a program broadcast on national China Central Television, or CCTV.

The Nanming River, which runs around 50 kilometers through the downtown area of Guiyang, is a first-class tributary of the Wujiang River, the largest waterway in Guizhou and the mother river in Guiyang.

Due to the government's continued efforts in treating the river's ecological and environmental issues, brought about by rapid industrialization and urbanization, the river has been transformed from a smelly stream to a pristine waterway and is said to be a prime example of successful urban river treatment in China. 

Guiyang began the massive clean-up project in November 2012 in response to the worsening environmental conditions in the Nanming River basin.

In 2017, Guiyang invested 7.59 billion yuan ($1.17 billion) to further improve the city's sewage treatment and purification capacity and its drainage system, so as to clean and divert sewage from the river.

Guiyang built sewage treatment plants in the old urban area and sewage treatment facilities in new communities. The city also constructed a 65-kilometer sewage pipe network, which improved the basin's daily sewage treatment capacity to the current 1.65 million metric tons, up from 990,000 tons in 2017. 

Apart from optimizing the layout of the sewage treatment plants, Guiyang added 1.5 million tons of qualified water from tailraces and 36,000 tons of clean water separated from sewage ditches to the Nanming River basin daily. These measures led to trans-regional water diversion of 500 million tons annually and resolved heavy siltation, water blackening and strong odors in the core section of the river. 

Meanwhile, the city has established management platforms and adopted advanced technologies to accurately monitor rivers and important sewage outlets. It has also achieved refined management in the ecological maintenance of rivers and lakes, aquatic environment protection and water pollution prevention and control.