On March 25, it’s learned from the Municipal Bureau of Water Resources and Hydroelectricity that in the evaluation of 2015 Single Index for Rural Drinking Water Safety (the coverage of rural tap water), Yichang city, together with Ezhou City, Qianjiang City, Jingzhou City and Shiyan City, won the honor of Excellence in Comprehensive Examinations, with Yichang City ranking first.

Last year, under the effective leadership of the municipal Party committee and municipal government, 5 major breakthroughs were made in the work of whole city’s rural drinking water safety, namely, the personnel, fund raising, quality of drinking water, construction management and protection and precision management. In 2015, with a budget 110 million yuan allocated from the Central Government as well as Hubei Provincial Government, as well as 404 million yuan from the Yichang municipal government and relevant counties, a number of 450,900 rural residents have obtained access to safe drinking water. Thus Yichang took the lead in helping every villager enjoy access to safe drinking water. By the end of last September, the water quality monitoring results had showed that the qualified rate of Yichang’s water quality in wet season was 65.1%, higher than the province\'s average of 59%, which indicates a big year-on-year surge for Yichang.

In terms of the management and protection of rural drinking water projects, the city\'s 3,158 centralized water supply projects selected their own duty officers for the work of management and protection, established the Maintenance and Protection Fund for Drinking Water Safety and publicized the service hotline. These projects have also established the online shared management information system for rural drinking water safety, publicized all related information in the system, such as the projects’ planning and construction, operation, management and protection, the beneficial ranges of every water supply project, the number of beneficiaries, population and people’s ID card numbers and so on. Therefore, Yichang city has become the only city achieving the informatization and precision management of drinking water safety in Hubei Province.

At present, the city\'s 3,158 centralized water supply projects are stepping up the efforts to install water-disinfection facilities, so as to achieve the whole coverage of water disinfection for all centralized water supply projects. (Reporter: Li Pengfei; correspondent: Deng Jinfang)