China Daily Global Edition (USA)
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Ankang city in Shaanxi province is a key source of water for the central route of the South-toNorth Water Diversion Project. It has established a digital platform that includes a monitoring system that covers all major bodies of water in the city, and an emergency response system that coordinates the activities of a number of government departments in the event of water contamination incidents.
About 68 percent of the water in the Danjiangkou Reservoir, a prime source for the project, comes from the Hanjiang River, and more than 20 percent of the 1,577-kilometer-long river runs through Ankang.
All 1,037 rivers in the city with watersheds bigger than 5 square kilometers are monitored by cameras so their real-time condition can be checked at any time via a computer link, said Luo Lan, an official with the Ankang emergency response center for the water diversion project.
The city employs 2,206 environmental supervisors, each of whom oversees an area determined by a grid system, and 2,051 river chiefs, who are responsible for patrolling specific sections of rivers. The officials are all connected to the digital platform via a phone link.
In addition to a hotline residents can use to report environmental contamination, the platform receives reports via other channels, including WeChat, email and the postal system.
The platform came into operation in December 2015, and by Nov 16, the hotline had received more than 9,800 calls, according to Luo.
On Nov 10, a truck carrying 20 metric tons of diesel oil and gasoline ran into a house at about 1 pm. Lou’s center received a report at 2:45 pm, when about 2.5 tons of gasoline leaked into a small river near the scene of the accident.
The platform ensured that officials from the emergency response center and local environmental protection authorities arrived at the scene — about 70 kilometers away — with pollution control equipment and materials about an hour later. Moreover, firefighters and officials from the local transportation, work safety and public security authorities arrived shortly after to implement pollution control measures.
At the time of the accident, the water in the small river was flowing at 0.01 cubic meters per second and the accident site was about 50 kilometers from the Hanjiang River. After 48 hours of cleanup operations, the spill had been controlled and only one section of the river, about 3 kilometers downstream of the accident scene, had been affected, the emergency response center said.