Sanitation workers clean up Guxin River after an oil spill. [Bo lei/ China Daily]

"Environmental protection efforts along the eastern route have fallen short of public expectation because most of the funds have been used for water diversion projects instead of pollution control," he said.

Even government funding for activities like re-vegetating the conservation area, and controlling the use of fertilizers and pesticides by farmers, has been hard to come by, said Sun. By the end of 2007, the Yangzhou bureau had received just 20 percent of the 500 million yuan provincial authorities pledged to invest in anti-pollution projects. Since then, they have not received another penny, he said.

Tests show that the Jiangdu section of the 1,000-km Grand Canal has the best water quality. However, the rapid population growth and economic development of nearby townships and villages is bringing more pollution and producing greater environmental hazards, said Wang.

"Unlike urban industrial pollution that is easy to track and control, contamination in the rural areas is more difficult to prevent - and it is rising very quickly," he warned.

Teng agreed and said the population of his native Dinggou has risen at a startling rate, while the waste being produced has almost doubled in the last decade. One of the contributing factors, he said, is the success of the local middle school, which, thanks to its good reputation, has attracted large numbers of migrants looking for a better education for their children.

Factories, including high-polluting chemical plants, have also sprung up around the town as the authorities encouraged their development to generate more tax revenue, he said. One boss of one chemical company just 50 m away from his home is "so close" with the authorities that no one has been able to shut it down, he claimed.

"While it's easy to drive away factories in cities, it's hard to do that in rural areas. The environmental standards here are lax and more and more companies are moving in because of that," said Teng.

He Dejin, a researcher with the water resources protection bureau for the Huaihe River Basin, co-drafted a report on the environmental impact of the first-phase of the eastern route in 2002. He suggested authorities should update their plans for the SNWD project to better cope with China's problems.

"Environmental protection along the eastern route has been dissatisfactory largely because the SNWD plan was made about a decade ago. Now there are new pollution sources that are not being addressed," he said.

Industrial pollution and domestic sewage in townships have grown quickly in the last 10 years, matching the country's rapidly expanding economy. He said neither of these issues was adequately addressed in the pollution control plan drafted in 2001.

"Constructing wastewater treatment facilities in townships, for example, was not included in the budget. These have become critical to pollution control initiatives in relatively developed regions," said He.

"Local governments should realize it is not enough just to follow the plan. It's more scientific to implement SNWD-related activities in line with the local pollution control needs. Only in this way will the SNWD project really bring benefits to people along the eastern route.

"Constructing wastewater treatment facilities should be placed under local governments even without funding from higher authorities. There has been too much finger-pointing between different government levels."

Because the rush for GDP growth still tops the agenda for local officials, pollution control is becoming an increasingly difficult task, he said.

Further north along the canal is Gengche town, where several hundred plastic processing factories discharge tons of detergent-rich wastewater directly into inlets of Luoma Lake, a key water storage lake for the eastern route.

People here have to dig as deep as 300 m to find clean drinking water after the plants contaminated their underground sources, said resident Xu Xiangdong, in his 60s. A decade ago, they only had to dig 30 m.

However, Xu is shrewd enough to know shutting down the factories is not the perfect solution. "We need those factories. Plastic processing has developed into the pillar industry of our town and that means jobs for us," he said.

Lu Xuanzhuang, a 16-year-old boy in nearby Shaji town, where the Xuhong River serves as another auxiliary channel for the SNWD project, said he does not see any benefit in divesting large tracts of farmland to build a new industrial park. More than 10 factories, including chemical and clothing plants, have opened since its construction and all pump wastewater straight into waterways connected to the river.

"I don't think those factories have brought anything other than pollution," he said. "Despite the job opportunities they offer, my parents are still unwilling to come back from the big cities where they can earn more."

While authorities attempt to build comparatively centralized treatment facilities in sprawling townships and villages, officials are also urging farmers to use less pesticides and fertilizers, said publicity officer Wang. However, changing the ingrained rural mindset will be no easy task, warned Wang Dezheng, a 62-year-old farmer in Daqiao town, which falls under Jiangdu's administration and sits on the upper reaches of the eastern route's water intake. He said most people in the countryside lack education and strongly believe that "the more pesticides they use, the better".

Algae fed by the fertilizers have already starved the oxygen from most of the waterways around Daqiao, causing a major depletion in the number of fish, said the farmer, who spends his spare time studying the environmental impact of agricultural products. "The government needs to actively educate people, not just encourage them," he said.

Wang at the Jiangdu environmental protection bureau added that identical chemical industrial parks built along the Yangtze River over the last two decades, such as in the provincial capital Nanjing, as well as Yizheng and Yangzhou, pose a real threat to the eastern route of the SNWD project.

Hou Yizhong, an official with the Yizheng environment protection bureau, hit the headlines last May for his calls to have the Yangzhou Chemical Industry Park relocated. He spent years arguing that the potential environmental hazards were "obvious".

"The common problem with China's pollution control initiatives is there are always loopholes in project implementation despite strict laws and rules," said Huaihe River protection officer He Dejin. "Local governments need to strengthen management and supervision and find a way to address environmental issues comprehensively.