Later in that year, the Jiangsu Provincial Government decided to promote Wuxi-style river management across the whole province. Provincial leaders were also appointed to coordinate pollution control efforts in 15 major rivers, said Zhu Tiejun, an official with Jiangsu's Taihu Lake Water Pollution Prevention and Control Office.

Zhu Aixun, Vice Mayor of Wuxi, said that under the leadership of river administrators, strong measures have been taken to control water pollution, including ecological rehabilitation, shoreline adjustment, sealing sewage draining exits along rivers and removing sludge on riverbeds.

"These measures have improved water quality in all river sections in the city," Zhu Aixun said. "Over the past years, all drinking water in Wuxi has met national quality standards."

Wang Zhongshu, an official in Yixing City, a county-level city under Wuxi, told Jiangsu-based Xinhua Daily that accountability is instrumental in ensuring water quality.

Wang recalled that when he served as the administrator of the Shedugang River in 2008-11, he convinced a dairy farm located close to bank of the river to invest money in biological treatment of animal waste, which successfully removed the odors emitted by waste.

In Wuxi's Huishan District, every river administrator is required to pay a security deposit of 3,000 yuan ($482) at the beginning of a year. At the end of the same year, if the water quality of a river improves, its administrator will have the deposit returned and be granted a reward of equal amount; if the water quality remains the same, only the deposit will be returned to the administrator; and if the water quality deteriorates, the deposit will not be returned.

"Water pollution control used to be regarded as the duty of only a small number of concerned government departments such as environment and water resource authorities. The river administrator system has engaged more officials in this endeavor," said Zhang Yulin, a professor at the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences of Nanjing University in Jiangsu.

Controversy

Although Zhang acknowledges the merit of the river administrator system, he also has worries.

According to Zhang, local officials have many responsibilities and environmental protection is only one of them. He said that he was afraid those officials may put their responsibility for growing the economy above that for environmental protection.

Wang Canfa, a legal professor at China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, said that a fatal flaw in the river administrator system is that its results hinge on the amount of attention that officials attach to pollution control.

The professor suggests that environmental responsibilities of local officials should be written into the law, while their performance should be evaluated according to well-defined criteria and procedures.

While the river administrator system may be effective in curbing pollution in small local rivers, experts said that cooperation between local governments is necessary for pollution control in cross-regional rivers.

According to Zhu Wei, deputy head of the Taihu Basin Authority under the Ministry of Water Resources, to clean up the Taihu Lake, pollution in rivers flowing into the lake must first be addressed. He said that environmental monitoring data showed that more than 90 percent of pollutants in the Taihu Lake came from rivers feeding into the lake.

The rivers that empty into the Taihu Lake are mainly located in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. To tackle cross-boundary pollution, the two provinces and neighboring Shanghai Municipality signed a joint action plan in July 2009 to handle environmental pollution emergencies. On May 5, 2013, Anhui Province also joined the mechanism.

Fu Siming, a professor at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, stressed that water pollution is a long-term challenge and tackling the problem requires long-lasting efforts. He believes that local officials should be responsible for protecting the health of rivers and lakes with or without the title of river administrator.

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