Cleaning up water is a long-term project and feasible plans should be drafted to this end, according to an article in the People's Daily. An excerpt follows:

During recent years, great efforts have been made to prevent and control water pollution. However, results so far have not been encouraging and many water sources still have not been purified within the expected time.

It may be unfair to blame our past efforts, since the purification of water is a long-term project.

What should be reviewed is the impractical water-cleansing plans. Environmental protection departments in different areas have set up strict measures to prevent and control the pollution of water sources in the 1990s.

The Huaihe River was key target of these moves. A recent plan was also drafted to clean up the Bohai Sea within three to five years.

However, up to now, the goal of cleaning these waterways still has not been reached, especially in the Huaihe River.

Investigation shows that pollution of the Huaihe River has actually become worse. Both the surface and underground runoffs have been contaminated, influencing the lives of 130 million residents in the Huaihe River valley.

Ten years of efforts and investment of 60 billion yuan (US$7.2 billion) are suspected to have gone in vain.

In this way, the plan to clean up Bohai might also meet a similar dilemma if we are too impatient to achieve the feat within a short period of time.

Experts estimate that it will take more than a decade to recover a degraded ecological system around a river valley.

Eying short-term political boosters, some local officials have rushed to launch splashy decontamination projects despite local financial conditions and the nature of water cleaning as a long-term endeavour.