Chongqing- The Ministry of Water Resources of PRC has selected 56 typical cases of the river and lake chief system recently for their effective experience to be drawn nationwide. Among them, some water management experiences of Chongqing Municipality were selected and promoted nationwide, according to the municipal river chief office on March 22.

Chongqing took the lead in promulgating local laws and regulations of the river chief system, bringing the implementation of the river chief system into the track of law on the first day of 2021.

Those Chongqing experiences came from the Nanchuan District, Qijiang District, and Tongnan District, each of which has more than 100 rivers and branches.

Mechanism innovation

What if the river chief left his post because of a new arrangement of duty, and the new river chief did not arrive in time, resulting in a "blank period" of river management?

Nanchuan District has innovated a new mechanism to solve this issue by River Chief Responsibility Transfer System.

This mechanism stipulates that when a river chief leaves his post, the person who takes over the position shall serve as the new river chief. If the incoming person cannot serve as the river chief for some reason, the river chief office shall determine the new river chief candidate.

The local river chief said that the constant management and protection of the river is attributed to the innovation and implementation of the River Chief Responsibility Transfer System.

Overall management

How does the river chief office act as a "housekeeper" to guard the hometown river?

The river chief office of Qijiang District has comprehensively used measures such as evaluation and accountability mechanism, allocation of funds, and project integration to promote ecological governance.

The Qijiang District will allocate a special fund of 5 million yuan (about 784,000 U.S. dollars) to the river chief system each year.

Seventy percent of the funds are used to support the daily cleaning of the river. A cleaning team of 300 people has been established supported by this fund. Twenty percent of the funds are assigned to the routine task of the river chief, which ensures the river chief has enough funds to solve problems. And the rest 10% of the funds are used for the river chief's office to carry out water quality monitoring and remediation of key problems.

Today, the water quality of the Qijiang River has been upgraded from Class IV to Class II, and the average compliance rate of water quality at river outlets has increased from 79% to 92%.

Cross-province cooperation

As we know, rivers have upriver and downriver, left and right banks, so how to manage cross-province rivers? The Tongnan District provided us with a good solution.

Fujiang River and Qiongjiang River run through the whole region of Tongnan District. And Tongnan is the first stop of the two rivers entering Chongqing from Sichuan Province.

Tongnan District has established a joint office to implement ecological compensation and carry out joint special governance so that it can comprehensively supervise the water quality of the upriver and the downriver.

River chiefs were encouraged to walk one more kilometer across the administrative border to conduct cross inspections. When confronting issues that require joint consultation, river chiefs at the junction always negotiate by the river to resolve issues.

Neighboring administrative regions have exchanged ideas regularly and shared transboundary rivers' information such as water quality, water conditions, rain conditions, and dangerous situations timely through QQ and WeChat, which are popular multi-purpose instant messaging apps in China.

Tongnan District also has good performance in "two-way compensation." This mechanism specified to use the division water area of upriver and downriver as the benchmark. If the water quality of the junction area meets the standard or even rises, the downriver will compensate the upriver. On the other hand, if the water quality declines or does not meet the standard, the upriver will compensate the downriver.