Clean drinking water is a luxury people in Jingning county of northwest China's Gansu Province have yet to enjoy, with worms measuring around 1cm found in the local supply, Beijing Youth Daily reported on Wednesday.

The heavily-polluted soils in Jingning. [File photo]

In 2014, the Health Bureau in Jingning conducted 167 water quality tests with 63.5 percent meeting safe drinking standards. News that the water supply was not safe spread quickly amongst its 130,000 inhabitants.

Jingning's two water sources have been contaminated further upstream, by Delong county in neighboring Ningxia Hui autonomous region, over the past thirteen years. A number of small companies in Delong have contributed to the county's economic development; however, they also produce a large amount of untreated waste water, which flows into Yu River and causes pollution across Jingning.

Jingning and Delong are only 42 kilometres apart, but are situated in Gansu and Ningxia provinces respectively, which makes responsibility for water treatment more complicated.

Mechanisms to handle the issue are being established at the Ministry of Environment Protection with 38 million yuan ($6.1 million) to be invested in Yu River water treatment, including the establishment of a waste water treatment plant, the newspaper stated.

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