[Chinese Mainland] Eight departments jointly issue a document to safeguard agricultural irrigation water safety: upgrading and renovation of wastewater facilities in industrial parks around farmland is accelerating.

Key Highlights: The Ministry of Ecology and Environment, together with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Supreme People's Court, and the Supreme People's Procuratorate — a total of 8 departments — issued the "Notice on Further Strengthening Pollution Risk Prevention for Industrial and Other Wastewater to Safeguard the Safety of Agricultural Irrigation Water," outlining measures in four areas: spatial control, discharge control, water quality monitoring, and enforcement supervision. Among these, advancing the upgrading of centralized wastewater treatment facilities in industrial parks around farmland and incorporating control requirements for total salt content, heavy metals, and toxic and hazardous pollutants into pollutant discharge permits in accordance with the law constitute a direct demand signal for the industrial water treatment industry.

I. A Rare Eight-Department Joint Action, Exceeding Conventional Scale

A document focused on "agricultural irrigation water" is led by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, with joint participation from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Supreme People's Court, and the Supreme People's Procuratorate, spanning environmental protection, agriculture, industry, public security, land resources, water resources, and both ends of the judicial system.

This combination itself sends a signal: the safety of agricultural irrigation water is no longer regarded as a purely agricultural matter, but rather a systemic risk interweaving food security, industrial pollution prevention and control, and judicial accountability. The document makes clear that the purpose is to implement source prevention, process control, and end-of-pipe supervision, and to promote the construction of a cross-departmental, full-lifecycle risk prevention and control system.

In response to prominent problems such as the unreasonable spatial layout of industrial enterprises, industrial parks, and livestock and poultry farms, incomplete wastewater discharge control requirements, and inadequate water quality safeguard mechanisms for agricultural irrigation water, the document specifies measures in four areas.

II. Breakdown of the Four Major Measures

• Strengthen spatial control — Relying on means such as land approval and project environmental impact assessment, strictly control project access in **high-risk areas** such as those around farmland and karst landforms, reducing pollutants entering farmland from the source
• Strengthen wastewater discharge control — Conduct investigations of water-related pollution sources around farmland, establish problem lists, track them item by item, and formulate remediation plans; **advance the upgrading of centralized wastewater treatment facilities in industrial parks around farmland**; carry out the formulation and revision of local water pollutant discharge standards, with emphasis on strengthening control of **total salt content, heavy metals, and toxic and hazardous pollutants** and incorporating them into **pollutant discharge permit** management in accordance with the law
• Strengthen water quality monitoring — Plan to issue technical guidelines for water quality monitoring of agricultural irrigation water **by the end of 2026年**; for irrigation water around industrial parks, in principle **conduct monitoring at least 2 times** during the irrigation period, covering the period before sowing and key crop growth stages (seedling stage, rice tillering stage, etc.); monitoring points to be set up in the fields
• Strengthen enforcement supervision — Accelerate the construction of an **integrated "air-space-ground" monitoring network**, strengthen supervision of discharge outlets and rainwater outlets of industrial parks, cluster zones, and livestock and poultry farming enterprises; focus on rectifying illegal discharge of industrial wastewater, livestock and poultry manure, and other substances through karst caves, seepage pits, and fissures

Among the four measures, the second is the most directly relevant to the industrial water treatment industry. The phrase "upgrading" applied to centralized treatment facilities in industrial parks around farmland means that such facilities, which previously operated under conventional standards, will face a round of process reinforcement targeting characteristic pollutants.

III. "Total Salt Content" Becomes a Keyword

What deserves close industry attention is that total salt content has been listed as a characteristic pollutant subject to strengthened control.

The particularity of total salt content lies in the fact that conventional biological and advanced treatment processes have essentially no capacity to remove dissolved salts. COD and ammonia nitrogen can be reduced through biological and advanced treatment, but salts only concentrate continuously within the system and are ultimately discharged with the effluent. This means that once total salt content becomes a mandatory control indicator, wastewater treatment facilities in industrial parks must add membrane concentration, evaporation crystallization, or salt separation and resource recovery units — this constitutes a process-route-level modification, not merely parameter tuning.

This trend has already been echoed at the local standard level. In the "Haihe River Basin Water Pollutant Discharge Standard" (second draft for comments) issued by the Department of Ecology and Environment of Henan Province in 2026年9月21日, a negotiated limit mechanism has already been applied to fluoride and indirect discharge of total salt content, explicitly stipulating that the total salt content in the effluent of downstream facilities shall not exceed 3000 mg/L, and requiring that negotiated limits be incorporated into pollutant discharge permits. The path of local areas leading and the national level following is quite clear.

For industrial parks, total salt content control also raises a deeper issue: segregated wastewater collection. Once high-concentration brine is mixed into ordinary sewage pipelines, the salt balance of the entire system is pushed higher, and no matter how much treatment is applied at the end, the situation remains passive. Therefore, the separation of "ordinary wastewater, high-concentration wastewater, reclaimed water, and concentrated brine" into distinct quality streams and networks is shifting from an optimization option to a mandatory requirement.

IV. Agricultural Irrigation Water Monitoring: A Nascent Niche Market

The document clearly plans to issue a technical guideline for water quality monitoring of agricultural irrigation water by the end of 2026年, and requires that irrigation water around industrial parks be monitored at least 2 times during the irrigation period.

The implementation of this requirement will generate three types of demand:

• Construction of field-level monitoring points — Monitoring points extend from discharge outlets to irrigation canals and farmland, creating demand for on-site rapid testing and miniaturized online equipment
• Segmented data management during the irrigation period — Time-series data at key nodes such as before sowing, the seedling stage, and the rice tillering stage need to form a traceable data chain
• Cross-departmental data sharing mechanism — The document also specifies requirements for information notification, data sharing, and emergency response during the irrigation water period; when exceedances are found, they must be promptly reported to the people's government at the same level and notified to relevant departments

Combined with the construction requirements of an integrated "space-air-ground" monitoring network, the combined application of satellite remote sensing, drone patrols, and ground-based online monitoring will gain substantial implementation space in irrigation water regulatory scenarios.

V. Forming an Encirclement with Existing Policies

This Notice is not an isolated case, but rather a link in the recent chain of water environment policies:

• 2026年6月 — The State Council's Action Plan for the Protection and Governance of Water Bodies Around the Public, which explicitly strengthens monitoring of agricultural irrigation water bodies, **water bodies using Reclaimed Water as the main water source**, and water bodies in karst landform areas
• 2026年7月 — The 14th Five-Year Plan for Ecological and Environmental Protection of Soil, Groundwater, and Agriculture and Rural Areas issued by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment and five other departments, which carries out water quality monitoring of farmland irrigation and cuts off the chain of heavy metal pollutants such as cadmium entering farmland
• 2026年9月23日 — The Action Plan for the Tackling of Water Pollution in Industrial Parks and the Action Plan for the Tackling of Black and Odorous Water Bodies in County Towns, reviewed and approved at the executive meeting of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment

The three threads point in the same direction: the control boundary of Industrial Wastewater is expanding from "discharge outlet compliance" to "receptor safety". In the past, evaluating a discharging entity meant looking at whether the concentration at the discharge outlet met standards; now it is necessary to see where this water ultimately flows, who uses it, and what impact it has on the receptor.

VI. How Enterprises Should Respond

First, re-verify the characteristic pollutants specified in the pollutant discharge permit. Whether total salt content, heavy metals, and toxic and hazardous pollutants have been included in permit control directly determines the mandatory nature of subsequent upgrades. Enterprises that have not yet been included should also anticipate in advance to avoid being caught off guard when standards switch.

Second, assess the sensitivity of the tailwater receptor. If there are farmland irrigation water intakes around the industrial park, the water quality requirements for tailwater will no longer be determined solely by discharge standards. Conducting a receptor survey is a low-cost preliminary action.

Third, incorporate salt balance into the overall water balance. For industrial parks with large volumes of high-salinity wastewater, differentiated collection and concentrated brine disposal pathways should be planned as early as possible to avoid passively adding high-cost Zero Liquid Discharge units at the end.

From "compliance discharge" to "receptor safety," this shift in regulatory logic is both a constraint and an opportunity for the Industrial Wastewater treatment industry — it turns environmental externalities that were previously difficult to quantify into demands that can be designed, engineered, and priced.

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