China Water Resources

Small-scale rural water supply projects are an essential component of China's rural water supply engineering system. The standardization of small-scale rural water supply projects is a key element in implementing the “3+1” standardized construction and management model for rural water supply and promoting its high-quality development. Small-scale rural water supply projects in China are characterized by small scale, scattered distribution, and a large number of projects, with each project serving a relatively small rural population, making operation and maintenance difficult. Under climate change, the water source guarantee capacity of small-scale water supply is insufficient, and under new requirements, there is considerable pressure to ensure stable compliance of water quality in small-scale rural water supply. To address the shortcomings of rural water supply and further improve the construction and management level of small-scale water supply, and to meet the requirements of achieving comprehensive rural revitalization and consolidating the water supply foundation for rural areas to basically have modern living conditions, based on the principles of adapting measures to local conditions, implementing categorized policies, taking multiple measures simultaneously, concentrating resources, and intensifying construction, this paper proposed categorized implementation pathways, including continuously optimizing the rural water supply layout, promoting standardized construction with improved quality and efficiency, strengthening law-based management to improve long-term operation and maintenance mechanisms, securing funds through multiple channels to ensure funding for construction and maintenance, and strengthening scientific and technological research to overcome technical bottlenecks.