From Basic Access to Premium Quality: Smart Water Solutions Ease Public Concerns

CCTV News: The Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed that guaranteeing and improving people's livelihoods in development is a major task of Chinese-style modernization. Qixian County in Shanxi Province has a vast rural area, with over 80% of its population living in rural areas. Rural water supply faces many challenges, including a large coverage area, scattered populations in remote areas, and incomplete water purification facilities. In recent years, Qixian County has set its sights on the goal of county-level unified management and established a sound mechanism for integrated urban and rural water supply, achieving a fundamental shift from "having access to water" to "having access to good quality water."

More than a decade ago, Qixian County implemented a tap water project covering all villages. However, for a long time, over 100 administrative villages and more than 200,000 rural residents in the county mainly relied on privately owned wells for water supply. Due to aging pipelines, uneven terrain leading to imbalanced water pressure and supply in different homes, and the lack of water supply management institutions and technology, the water supply assurance rate was low and the water quality did not meet standards.

How to solve the problem of rural water supply and drinking water safety? Starting in 2019, Qixian County began to comprehensively promote the integrated construction of urban and rural water use, implementing "county-level unified management" of urban and rural water supply.

First, the total capacity of the three local high-level reservoirs was expanded to nearly 26 million cubic meters, serving as the primary water source for the urban and rural water supply project. Then, breaking the previous pattern of each village relying on its own groundwater, it vigorously promoted the construction of large-scale centralized water supply, extending the urban pipeline network to villages and solving the "last mile" problem of rural drinking water.

Zhao Baoxiang, director of the Qixian County Water Resources Development Center in Jinzhong City, Shanxi Province, introduced that the county has laid 592 kilometers of main and branch pipelines and 4068 kilometers of village-level pipelines, building a new integrated urban and rural water supply system with large-scale water supply as the main body and small-scale water supply projects as a supplement.

Currently, the rural tap water coverage rate in Qixian County has reached 100%, with a centralized water supply rate of 99.6%.

To enable villagers to transition from "having access to water" to "having access to good quality water," four high-standard water plants for centralized water supply in Qixian County introduced ceramic membrane deep-treatment technology last year, expanding the water supply capacity to 100,000 cubic meters per day. For towns with single-village water supply in remote mountainous areas, micro-water supply stations are built, using "filtration and purification + ultraviolet disinfection" facilities. Four water quality testing laboratories have also been established at water plants.

Today, all villages and towns in Qixian County have achieved 100% compliance with drinking water quality standards, with many test values significantly exceeding national drinking water standards. Currently, the local area is also developing application sub-platforms for the county-level intelligent water supply platform, promoting the transformation of rural water supply from construction to management and service.