Journal of Groundwater Science and Engineering  Apr.2013 1
Corresponding author, Tel/fax: 0086 10 58805051, email: l.cheng@bnu.edu
Groundwater quality Management in China
Aizhong Ding 1, Lirong Cheng 1, Steve Thornton 2, Wei Huang 2, David Lerner 2
1
College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, China
2
Department of Civil and Structural Engineering, University of Sheffield, UK
water pollutionAbstract: Groundwater quality is of vital importance in groundwater safety especially for the purpose of water supply, its management becomes more and more necessary as groundwater contamination has threaten its safe use in China.  The article analyzed the contamination sources of groundwater and imp
act of contamination on human health and water supply, the knowledge gaps were pointed and recommendations were made for groundwater quality management in China.
Keywords: groundwater quality; contamination; management; China
1 Introduction
Groundwater is one of the major sources for water supply in China, which covers 18.2% of the total water supply in 2011 reported by the Ministry of Water Resources of China. It provides drinking water for 70% of the total population and 95% of the rural population in the country. In many arid and semi-arid areas, groundwater is the only source of drinking water. Therefore, groundwater needs to be at good status in terms of availability and quality for the safety of water supply, however in many regions, groundwater is non-usable due to its contamination and poor quality. Many recent field investigations showed that groundwater is contaminated by halogenated hydrocarbons (Gao et al. 2012), nitrate (Ma et al. 2012; Zhang et al. 2012), pesticides (Zhao & Wang 2012) and heavy metals (Zhang et al. 2012) in some regions of China. The contamination of groundwater has threatened local water supply and sustainability of
water resources with high content of hazardous materials and not suitable for use as longer.  Ground
water pollution has become a common problem in urban areas, especially in big cities. A recent investigation reported that the groundwater quality status in more than half of the investigated cities are worsening. Groundwater pollution has developed from individual localized issues to large area problem. Shallow groundwater can no more be used for drinking purpose. Another investigation has shown that 64% of the investigated 118 cities where groundwater is regarded as the main water source suffered from heavy groundwater pollution, 33% suffered from light groundwater pollution. Only 3% still has relatively clean groundwater.
In Northeast China, groundwater is highly polluted in the heavy industry regions and oil production areas. In the Songhuajiang-Nenjiang plain, the main pollutants in groundwater include nitrate, ammonium and oil; while in the lower Liaohe plain, nitrate, ammonium, volatile phenol
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