In recent years, Maoming continues to strengthen the protection of the water resources of the Gaozhou Reservoir in Gaozhou country-level city.

The water in Gaozhou Reservoir is crystal clean. [Photo/WeChat account: maofabu]

The Gaozhou Reservoir was built in 1958 and is an important source of water for industrial and agricultural production, as well as drinking water for residents in the urban areas of Maoming.

Its catchment area covers seven towns and 2,689 natural villages in Gaozhou, with over 300,000 residents. The catchment area extends 1,022 square kilometers and the designed storage capacity is 1.28 billion cubic meters.

Since 2008, the Maoming municipal government has arranged a special financial fund of 193 million yuan ($27 million) for the water source protection of the reservoir.

Maoming has also introduced various measures to improve the water quality. It implemented a river chief management system and has daily patrols of the reservoir.

In recent years, more than 40 enterprises have closed in the reservoir's catchment area, including paper mills and foundries, and over 400 large livestock breeding farms there have been shut down.

Meanwhile, Maoming continues to expand its area of so-called ecological public welfare forests, which are non-commercial forests for the public's enjoyment, as opposed to commercial forests yielding economic benefits. Currently, they cover 960,000 mu (64,000 hectares), accounting for 84.15 percent of the total forest area in the reservoir area.

What's more, Maoming has established seven garbage compression and transfer stations in the seven towns within the catchment area. It also releases over 3 million fish into the reservoir every year to improve the self-purification capacity of the water.