[Chinese Mainland] Two Months into the Implementation of the Ecological Environment Code: "Priority Use" of Reclaimed Water Elevated from Policy Advocacy to National Law

The 2026年3月12日 of the Ecological and Environmental Code of the People's Republic of China was adopted by vote at the Fourth Session of the 14th National People's Congress, promulgated by Presidential Order No. 70, and came into force on 2026年8月15日 (National Ecology Day), comprising 5 parts and 1242 articles. Article 789 of the Code explicitly states that the state encourages and supports wastewater resource utilization, and requires local people's governments at or above the county level to incorporate unconventional water sources such as reclaimed water, harvested rainwater, seawater and desalinated seawater, mine water, and brackish water into the unified allocation of water resources; the relevant provisions also stipulate that water used for urban greening, road cleaning, vehicle washing, construction, and ecological landscapes shall give priority to reclaimed water meeting the applicable standards.

I. From Separate Laws to a Code: Water-Related Rules Have a New "General Basis"

The Ecological and Environmental Code is China's second law named a "Code" after the Civil Code, and the first unified code in the field of ecology and environment, with a full text of approximately 16万 characters. The compilation adopts a "moderate codification" model: it incorporates and replaces the Environmental Protection Law, the Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law, the Atmospheric Pollution Prevention and Control Law, the Soil Pollution Prevention and Control Law, the Solid Waste Pollution Prevention and Control Law, the Noise Pollution Prevention and Control Law, the Marine Environment Protection Law, the Radioactive Pollution Prevention and Control Law, the Environmental Impact Assessment Law, and the Cleaner Production Promotion Law — 10 old laws in total — and upon the Code's entry into force, these 10 laws are simultaneously repealed; separate laws such as the Yangtze River Protection Law, the Yellow River Protection Law, and the Wetland Protection Law remain in effect.

For the water conservancy and wastewater treatment industry, the most direct change is that the article index for enforcement and approval has been rewritten. Provisions previously cited from the Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law now need to be matched to the corresponding articles in the Pollution Prevention and Control Part of the Code. This also explains why many local people's congress standing committees and administrative enforcement departments have recently carried out intensive regulatory cleanups and special training.

II. Reclaimed Water Enters the Law: Three Key Statements

Among the water-related provisions of the Code, the following are most closely related to wastewater treatment and reclaimed water reuse:

• Article 789 — The state encourages and supports wastewater resource utilization, and local people's governments at or above the county level shall plan and construct wastewater resource utilization infrastructure in a coordinated manner; local people's governments at or above the county level shall, in accordance with local water resource conditions, strengthen wastewater treatment and reuse, incorporate unconventional water sources such as reclaimed water, harvested rainwater, seawater and desalinated seawater, mine (pit) water, and brackish water into the unified allocation of water resources, and plan and construct unconventional water development and utilization facilities in a coordinated manner.
• Article 793 — The state vigorously promotes water conservation measures, popularizes new water-saving technologies and processes, develops water-saving industry, agriculture, and services, advances domestic water conservation, and strengthens the recycling and utilization of domestic wastewater.
• Priority use provision — Water used for urban greening, road cleaning, vehicle washing, construction, and ecological landscapes shall give priority to reclaimed water meeting the applicable standards; the relevant provisions also specify water-saving requirements for industry, services, and agriculture, as well as the "three simultaneities" system for water-saving facilities in new, expanded, and reconstructed construction projects.

The significance of these three statements lies in the change of hierarchy. Previously, "priority use of reclaimed water" appeared mostly in departmental rules, local regulations, and normative documents, constituting policy advocacy; after entering the Code, it has become a mandatory statement with the force of national law, giving local authorities a higher-level basis for formulating water resource allocation plans, approving water withdrawal permits, and assessing water conservation work.

III. What "Unified Allocation" Means

The phrase "incorporate unconventional water sources into the unified allocation of water resources" will have threefold impact at the operational level.

First, the planning approach must change. Traditional comprehensive water resource planning takes surface water and groundwater as the main supply sources, with reclaimed water often discussed separately as a supplementary source. Unified allocation requires placing the available supply volume, service scope, and transmission and distribution works of reclaimed water into the same balance sheet as conventional water sources for coordinated planning, which directly affects water withdrawal permit approval and new water withdrawal quotas in water-scarce areas.

Second, infrastructure must be matched. The Code explicitly states that local people's governments at or above the county level shall plan and construct wastewater resource utilization infrastructure in a coordinated manner. The bottleneck of reclaimed water has never been at the treatment end but at the transmission and distribution end — pipe networks, pumping stations, storage facilities, and metering systems. These elements, once often regarded as "supporting works," now have explicit statutory responsibility support.

Third, pricing and incentive mechanisms must keep pace. Tools such as user-pays, fiscal subsidies and rewards, and tax incentives have already been practiced in many places: the Yellow River Protection Law stipulates that the use of unconventional water sources such as reclaimed water is exempt from water resource tax; some pilot cities provide subsidies and rewards for water source substitution and reclaimed water technical transformation projects at a certain proportion of the investment amount. After the Code takes effect, such policy tools are expected to gain a more solid legal basis.

IV. Implementation Pace: What Localities Are Doing

Two months since the Code came into force on 2026年8月15日, local-level alignment work has been fully rolled out:

• Regulatory review — The Standing Committee of the People's Congress of Bijie City, Guizhou Province, carried out a centralized review in accordance with the spirit of the Code, screening a total of 9 local regulations related to the ecological environment, and found that some provisions had issues such as legislative bases needing updates, inconsistency with the Code, and responsibility settings inconsistent with the Code's penalty rules.
• Specialized legal study — The Water Resources Bureau of Lu'an City, Anhui Province, held a specialized rule-of-law class on 9月29日, clarifying the applicable relationship between the Code and separate laws and regulations such as the Water Law, the Soil and Water Conservation Law, and the Flood Control Law, making clear that water administrative licensing and water-related administrative penalties shall give priority to the application of separate water laws, while strictly following the ecological protection principles established by the Code.
• Enforcement training — The Administrative Law Enforcement Bureau of Changsha County, Hunan Province, conducted training on commonly used causes of action under the Code, focusing on analyzing the differences between the old and new laws in the application of violation rules and the discretion of penalty rules, so as to unify enforcement standards.
• Line-by-line interpretation — Water resources departments in many places have successively issued interpretations of the Code's water-related provisions, with priority use of reclaimed water, the "three simultaneities" of water conservation, and unified allocation of unconventional water as the key points of publicity.

It is worth noting that after the Code took effect, localities have also simultaneously advanced local legislation. Cities such as Jinan have issued or revised water resource management regulations, making clear that water for landscape use, gardening and greening, environmental sanitation, car washing, and construction should give priority to the use of reclaimed water that meets the required standards, consistent with the wording of the Code. This structure of "the Code sets principles, localities set detailed rules" is exactly the typical form of reclaimed water institutional development in the coming years.

V. Industry Observation: Three Certainties for Reclaimed Water

For the wastewater treatment and reclaimed water reuse industry, the biggest change brought by the Code is not the addition of some engineering requirement, but rather the elimination of the ambiguity in the positioning of reclaimed water. Based on recent policy and market trends, at least three points are now clear:

• Reclaimed water is no longer an emergency water source — From "encouraged use" to "priority use" and "unified allocation," the identity of reclaimed water in water resource planning has shifted from a backup water source to one of the baseline water sources. The total national utilization of reclaimed water has exceeded 256亿 cubic meters, and during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period the target for unconventional water utilization is more than 300亿 cubic meters.
• Industry and municipal miscellaneous use are the main battlefield — The priority use scenarios listed in the Code are concentrated in urban greening, road sweeping, vehicle washing, building construction, and ecological landscapes, all of which are directions with relatively clear water quality requirements and high pipeline network accessibility; on the industrial side, circulating cooling and process make-up water are jointly driven by the "three simultaneities" of water conservation and water withdrawal permit constraints.
• Standards and metering are the prerequisites for access — The series of national standards for Urban Wastewater Reclamation and Utilization (such as water quality for urban miscellaneous use GB/T 18920, water quality for landscape environmental use GB/T 18921, and water quality for industrial use GB/T 19923) provide the basis for determining "meeting the required standards," while metering and monitoring capabilities will determine whether reclaimed water can truly enter the accounting system of unified allocation.

Industry analysts believe that the first full year after the Code takes effect will be a window period for the intensive introduction of local supporting systems. For wastewater treatment and reclaimed water reuse enterprises, studying in advance the local unified water resource allocation plan and reclaimed water pricing mechanism is more meaningful than simply focusing on treatment scale — because what determines project returns is shifting from "how much can be treated" to "how much can be supplied and at what price it is settled."

TIANYI TECH Co., Ltd. (TIANYI LIMITED) has long been deeply engaged in the fields of wastewater treatment and reclaimed water reuse. Centering on the three major directions of low-carbon processes, resource recovery, and smart operations, it provides full-chain services from solution design, equipment manufacturing, engineering construction to operation management for municipal wastewater plants, industrial parks, and various water-using entities. With the goal of "stable compliance, energy saving and consumption reduction, and resource circulation," the company continuously helps customers transform reclaimed water from the endpoint of compliant discharge into a resource that can be metered, traded, and settled.

Source: Water-related provisions of the Ecological Environment Code of the People's Republic of China (effective 2026年8月15日), interpretations of the Code by The Paper and the Tianjin Water Conservation and Water Treatment Technology Research Association, public information from the National Water Conservation Office of the Ministry of Water Resources, and public reports from local people's congress standing committees and water resources departments.