China needs over 1t yuan to treat severe river pollution: official

[BEIJING] China will need more than 1 trillion yuan (S$201.2 billion) to build a massive network of waste water pipelines to reduce heavy pollution in the country's rivers, an environment ministry official said on Thursday.

Under a water pollution action plan published in 2015, China's cities are under pressure to cut what authorities call "black and stinky water" in the country's rivers to less than 10 per cent of waterways by 2020.

Zhang Bo, director of the water department at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, told reporters that China still needed to build another 400,000km of waste water pipelines, with each kilometre costing 3 million yuan.

AFP