A senior Chinese lawmaker said Saturday China still faces a severe water environment situation as the trend of deterioration of water environment "hasn't been checked effectively".

"Total discharge of waste water reached 52.4 billion tons in 2005, a rise of 26 percent over 2000," Sheng Huaren, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, in his report to a meeting of the NPC Standing Committee on inspection of compliance with environmental protection law.

He said water pollution treatment tasks in major drainage areas during the Tenth Five-Year Plan period (2001-2005) are not fully fulfilled. In the Haihe River, Liaohe River and Huaihe River valleys, only 70 percent of the tasks are fulfilled.

He said water at nearly one third of monitoring points across the country remains seriously polluted and has lost ecological functions.

In the Yellow River Valley, water at one fourth of monitoring points is seriously polluted.

Sheng said the Weihe River, a major tributary of the Yellow River, annually receives more than 600 million tons of waste water and 270,000 tons of chemical oxygen demand, which is nearly about four times of its environmental capacity.

He said many enterprises discharge waste water without treatment. To reduce production cost, some new enterprises also do not treat waste water properly.

He said 278 of 661 Chinese cities have no sewage treatment plants. Some existing sewage treatment plants do not operate in full capacity for the lack of supporting pipe networks. Some existing sewage treatment plants with complete pipe networks suspend operation from time to time due to the lack of reasonable charge collection policies and lack of operating funds.

He said such issues have been raised several times in the past inspections, but haven't been effectively resolved yet by now.

"We hope those sewage treatment plants, built with huge funds, can really live up to their functions," said Sheng.

(Xinhua News Agency August 27, 2006)