The State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) said on its website on Monday, the day before World Water Day, that the five-year cleanup plan it launched for China's waterways in 2001 is moving too slowly.

The main waterways included in the plan include the Liao, Hai and Huai rivers, with 1,205 projects between them; and Taihu, Chaohu and Dianchi lakes, with 327 projects. The Three Gorges Reservoir area and the South-North water diversion project are also included, with 338 and 260 projects, respectively.

By the end of 2004, about 27 percent of the projects in those areas had not yet been started.

A SEPA official said that although 2005 is the last year of the 10th Five-year Plan, a large gap still exists between current levels of pollution and the target of the plan. He urged local governments to accelerate movement toward that goal or risk being exposed.

Pollution of China's major lakes, rivers and their tributaries, as well as of aquifers that serve as well-water sources, is a serious and worsening problem for much of the nation despite central government efforts to control it.

Last November, the Ministry of Water Resources announced an 8-billion-yuan (US$966.6 million) plan to halve the number of citizens without clean drinking water -- currently numbering about 300 million -- by 2015 and provide safe drinking water for all rural residents by the end of 2020.

The target is one of China's Millennium Development Goals.

Unsafe drinking water is connected to 80 percent of all diseases and deaths in developing countries. In China, more than 50 diseases are the direct result of unclean drinking water.

The international observance of World Water Day grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. The theme of the event this year is: Water for Life 2005-2015.

(China.org.cn, Xinhua News Agency March 21, 2005)