Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu published a signed article, “Promoting Outfall Management Reform and Deeply Fighting the Battle for Blue Water”.

Strengthening and regulating the supervision and management of river and sea outfalls (hereinafter referred to as outfalls) plays an important role in improving the quality of water ecosystems and environment, promoting green development, protecting and building beautiful rivers and lakes as well as beautiful bays, and it is a powerful hand to fight the battle of defending the blue water in depth, and it is an important measure to promote the modernization of ecological and environmental governance system and governance capacity. Environmental Protection Law, Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law and other laws have made provisions for the management of outfalls. Regulations on the management of river channels and regulations on nature reserves have further clarified the specific requirements for the approval, supervision and management of outfalls. The Ministry of Water Resources (MWR), the former State Oceanic Administration (SOA) and the former Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) have actively explored and carried out a great deal of work in their respective fields, achieving positive results. Since the transfer of the responsibility for the management of river outfall installation to the Ministry of Ecology and Environment in 2018, the ecological and environmental system has been solidly carrying out pilot projects for the investigation and rectification of the outfalls of the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, and the Bohai Sea, exploring and accumulating experience, and achieving positive results.

Recently, the General Office of the State Council issued the Implementation Opinions on Strengthening the Supervision and Management of Outfalls into Rivers and the Sea (hereinafter referred to as the “Implementation Opinions”), which explicitly puts forward major initiatives to deepen the reform of outfall installation and management. This is to Comrade Xi Jinping as the core of the CPC Central Committee profound grasp of China's ecological civilization and ecological environmental protection situation, based on the continuous improvement of the quality of the water ecological environment, to meet the people's growing needs for a better life to make a major strategic plan. We should effectively raise the political position, guided by Xi Jinping's thought on ecological civilization, accurately grasp the significance of the “Implementation Opinions”, the clear focus of the task and the main initiatives, and resolutely implement and enforce the implementation of the construction of a beautiful China to make a positive contribution.

Deep understanding of the significance of the development and introduction of the Implementation Opinions

The formulation and promulgation of the Implementation Opinions is a concrete practice of implementing Xi Jinping's thought on ecological civilization. Xi Jinping's thought on ecological civilization is the ideological guide and fundamental guideline for promoting the construction of ecological civilization and ecological environmental protection. Insisting on the harmonious coexistence of man and nature, insisting that a good ecological environment is the most popular well-being of people's livelihoods, and insisting that mountains, waters, forests, fields, lakes and grasses are a community of life are the important contents and distinctive features of Xi Jinping's thought on ecological civilization. The Implementation Opinions closely around the construction of a harmonious symbiotic relationship between man and water, grasp the law of the wholeness of the basin sea ecosystem, adhere to the concept of system, put forward the supervision and management of river outfalls into the sea “land and water co-ordination, water to set the shore” basic principles, co-ordination of the shore of the water, land and sea, as well as upstream and downstream of the watershed, left and right coast, and to promote the basin of the ecological environment in the watershed sea The quality of watershed marine ecological environment has been improved continuously. Starting from focusing on the outstanding water ecological and environmental problems around the people, taking outfalls as a starting point, through the investigation and tracing of the whole process from pollutant generation to discharge into the river and the sea, and applying categorized measures and systematic remediation. The new outfall standardized settings, forcing onshore pollution management, driving the green transformation of economic and social development, and promoting the construction of a beautiful China. The Implementation Opinions will implement Xi Jinping's thought of ecological civilization into the overall requirements, key tasks, safeguard measures and other aspects, will be a strong lead to deepen the outfall setup and management reform to take root and achieve practical results.

The formulation and promulgation of the “Implementation Opinions” is an important action to implement the work policy of precise pollution control, scientific pollution control and lawful pollution control. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized the need to adhere to the precise treatment of pollution, scientific treatment of pollution, according to the law, to maintain the strength, extend the depth, broaden the breadth, and continue to fight the battle to defend the blue sky, blue water and clean soil. The Implementation Opinions highlights the regulation in accordance with the law, requiring the development of outfall supervision and management regulations and technical specifications, the setup of outfalls in accordance with the law, the implementation of the audit system filing system, outfall audit, filing information in a timely manner and in accordance with the law to the community. Strict investigation and remediation, set up in violation of laws and regulations of the outfall, be banned in accordance with the law. Increase law enforcement efforts to set up outfalls in violation of laws and regulations or not in accordance with the provisions of the responsible body of sewage discharge, be punished according to law; to avoid supervision and management of the responsible body of the sewage discharge bypass, according to law to be severely investigated and dealt with. Highlight the precise supervision, according to the outfall responsible body belongs to the industry and emission characteristics of the clear type of outfall, to intercept and treat sewage as the focus of outfall classification and precise remediation. The public enterprises and institutions closely related to the life of the masses, residential neighborhoods and other outfall remediation, to do a good job of coordination, to avoid damage to the interests of the masses, to ensure that the remediation work is safe and orderly; for the real difficulties, short-term difficulties in completing the remediation of outfalls of enterprises and institutions, can be reasonably set up a transition period, guidance to help remediation. Highlight the scientific supervision, emphasizing the strengthening of scientific and technological research and development, to carry out various types of remote sensing monitoring, surface aerial surveys, underwater detection, pipeline inspection and other practical technology and equipment research and development and integration, to provide scientific support for the outfall investigation and traceability of remediation and effective supervision.

The development and promulgation of the Implementation Opinions is an important action to implement the guidelines of precise pollution control, scientific pollution control and lawful pollution control. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized the need to adhere to the precise treatment of pollution, scientific treatment of pollution, treatment of pollution in accordance with the law, to maintain the strength, extend the depth, broaden the breadth, and continue to fight the battle to defend the blue sky, blue water, and clean soil. The Implementation Opinions highlights the regulation in accordance with the law, requiring the development of outfall supervision and management regulations and technical specifications, the setup of outfalls in accordance with the law, the implementation of the audit system filing system, outfall audit, filing information in a timely manner and in accordance with the law to the community. Strict investigation and remediation, set up in violation of laws and regulations of the outfall, be banned in accordance with the law. Increase law enforcement efforts to set up outfalls in violation of laws and regulations or not in accordance with the provisions of the responsible body of sewage discharge, be punished according to law; to avoid supervision and management of the responsible body of the sewage discharge bypass, according to law to be severely investigated and dealt with. Highlight the precise supervision, according to the outfall responsible body belongs to the industry and emission characteristics of the clear type of outfall, to intercept and treat sewage as the focus of outfall classification and precise remediation. The public enterprises and institutions closely related to the life of the masses, residential neighborhoods and other outfall remediation, to do a good job of coordination, to avoid damage to the interests of the masses, to ensure that the remediation work is safe and orderly; for the real difficulties, short-term difficulties in completing the remediation of outfalls of enterprises and institutions, can be reasonably set up a transition period, guidance to help remediation. Highlighting scientific supervision, emphasizing the strengthening of scientific and technological research and development, to carry out various types of remote sensing monitoring, surface aerial surveys, underwater detection, pipeline inspection and other practical technology and equipment research and development and integration, to provide scientific support for the outfall investigation and traceability of remediation and effective supervision.

Accurately grasping the innovations of the Implementation

Realizing full coverage of outfall management. Urban and rural surface pollution has become an important factor affecting the quality of the water ecosystem, but the current supervision and management of river and sea outfalls only includes industrial outfalls and urban sewage treatment plant outfalls. In order to comprehensively control the discharge of pollutants into the river and the sea, the “Implementation Opinions” in the original management of outfall types based on further expanding the scope of outfalls, adding large and medium-sized irrigation outfalls, aquaculture under the scale of outfalls and other types of basically cover all common outfalls, to achieve full coverage. At the same time, we encourage conditional places to try first, will be investigated agricultural outfalls, urban rainwater outfalls and other outfalls into the management, to explore breakthroughs in urban and rural surface pollution management bottlenecks.

Clarify the responsibilities of all parties. Outfalls “can not find the main” is a long-term plague of grass-roots front-line management of the outstanding problems, resulting in part of the management of the provisions of the difficult to put into practice. The “Implementation Opinions” requires a clear definition of the main body responsible for each outfall, to ensure that there is someone in charge, someone responsible. It is difficult to distinguish the responsible body of the outfall, the local government to carry out traceability analysis, to determine the responsible body of the outfall, after the traceability is still unable to determine, by the local people's government at the county level or municipal government as the responsible body, or by the responsible body of the designation. The Implementation Opinions also proposed the establishment of national coordination, provincial responsibility, municipal and county supervision and management of outfalls to implement the working mechanism, and to strengthen the local government's responsibility for local management.

Batch classification to promote the investigation and rectification. The Implementation Opinions” for illegal and irregularly set up outfalls, domestic sewage discharge, borrowing sewage and other people's concern about the pain, blockage, difficult problems, put forward in accordance with the law to outlaw a number of illegal and irregularly set up outfalls, clean up and merge a number of centralized collection and treatment of sewage outfalls, in accordance with the requirements conducive to clarifying the responsibility for the maintenance of management and strengthening of supervision, the standardization and remediation of a number of sewage outfalls. Outfalls should be set up in line with the relevant norms and requirements and in a conspicuous position in the tree signs, to facilitate on-site monitoring and supervision and inspection.

Decentralization to reduce the burden on enterprises. The Implementation Opinions” to implement the State Council ‘to serve’ the spirit of reform, and further decentralize the approval authority, simplify the approval process. In addition to the environmental impact assessment documents by the state approval of construction projects in the river outfall and is located in the provincial buffer zone, international or national border rivers and lakes and the existence of inter-provincial disputes in the river outfall set up by the Ministry of Ecology and Environmental Protection of the relevant watersheds (sea areas) ecological environment Supervision and Management Bureau is responsible for the implementation of the rest of the outlet set up by the local ecological environment department at the provincial level is responsible for determining the administrative area within the grading of the review of the authority. . The Implementation Opinions also require the construction of an outfall information platform, the establishment of a dynamic management account for outfalls, the strengthening of data sharing with information platforms such as sewage permits and EIA approvals, and the implementation of online audits, so as to allow data to run more and the public to run fewer errands.

Investing in the implementation of the Implementation Opinions

Compacting responsibilities and forming joint efforts to promote water pollution control. The Implementation Opinions require the provincial people's government to coordinate the organization of outfall investigation and remediation work in the administrative area, strengthen the supervision and management of outfall leadership, coordinate the development of management systems, policies and measures, and do a good job in organizing and scheduling, and compaction of the responsibilities of all parties; municipal people's government to assume the main responsibility for organizing and implementing the work of outfall investigation and traceability, develop and implement remediation programs to intercept and treat sewage pollution as the focus of the remediation. Each region should be in accordance with the “who pollutes, who governs” and the principle of government underwriting one by one to clarify the responsibility of the main body, the establishment of a list of responsible subjects. Ecological environment departments to exercise unified supervision and management of pollution discharge at the sewage outfall and administrative law enforcement duties, water conservancy and other relevant departments combined with the work responsibilities of the division of labor to form a synergy.

Establishment of rules and regulations, sound outfall management policy system. In accordance with the requirements of the “Implementation Opinions”, accelerate the preparation and introduction of supervision and management of river outfalls and outfall classification, traceability, remediation, standardized construction, set up a series of standards and norms, guidance and supervision of the local investigation and remediation of the existing outfalls, standardized approval of the new outfalls, and strengthen the day-to-day management of the outfalls, and build a more complete regulatory system, a more scientific technical system, and a more efficient management system by 2025. supervision and management system of outfalls.

Strict law enforcement to enhance the effectiveness of outfall supervision. Outfalls should not only be remediated, but also regulated. It is necessary to implement the implementation of the “Implementation Opinions” put forward by the planning leadership, standardization of approvals, monitoring and inspection, strict enforcement, platform construction, assessment and accountability, scientific and technological support, information disclosure and other management requirements, improve the long-term mechanism, strengthen law enforcement and supervision, and increase the penalties for environmental violations, and effectively control pollutant discharges into the river and the sea.