The Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) recently released its 2015 survey results, which show that of its more than 5,000 underground water…

The Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) recently released its 2015 survey results, which show that of its more than 5,000 underground water monitoring sites in 202 cities, the water quality at more than 60 percent is "bad" or "very bad."

The factors that led many of the sites to be substandard include excessive water hardness and elevated concentrations of manganese and sulfate. At some locations potentially harmful concentrations of arsenic, lead, cadmium and chrome were found in groundwater

Compared with the previous year, water quality at more than 62 percent of the monitoring sites was stable, 17 percent were improving, while 20 percent were worsening, the report said

Reports about polluted water resources are always alarming, and different government departments seem to have different responses

In early April, a Ministry of Water Resources (MWR) report saying "80 percent of China’s underground water is undrinkable" evoked great public concern

The MWR later claimed that the media had misunderstood its report, which meant to say that 80 percent of the shallow layer of underground water was undrinkable, but the deeper layer of underground water, which is a major source of drinking water, was not that bad

Among the country’s 4,748 sources of drinking water, 1,817 are underground water sources, and about 85 percent of such sources meet water standards, the ministry said

"In the water pollution report, the MWR looked at 18 provinces and regions in northern China where water pollution is more serious, but the monitored subjects were mainly shallow underground water," said Jia Shaofeng, deputy director of the water resources research center at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "We are using less underground water for our drinking water now."

Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, said many localities have been digging deeper to collect underground water because the shallow water is too polluted. "But it does not mean we don’t have to worry about the quality of the deeper water," he said, adding that deeper underground water can also get polluted, and the amount of such water is limited