Has Third-Party Monitoring Improved Water Pollution Data Quality? Evidence from National Surface Water Assessment Sections in China

Liange Zhao,Xueyuan Wang,Mengyao Hong

doi:10.3390/w13202917

Abstract

In China, the central government assesses local governments based on data monitored and reported by local agencies, and the accuracy of local statistics has been controversial. In order to further guarantee the authenticity and reliability of surface water monitoring data, the central government will gradually withdraw the local monitoring powers of the national surface water assessment section and implement third-party monitoring to achieve “national assessment and national monitoring.” This paper is based on the time-point water data of important national water quality automatic monitoring stations from 2015 to 2020, using the McCrary (2008) density test to infer possible data manipulation phenomena, and analyze whether third-party monitoring has improved the accuracy of China’s environmental data. The results of the study show that between 2015 and 2020, the observed 81 monitoring sites had varying degrees of data discontinuity. The discontinuity of the data after third-party monitoring was reduced in dissolved oxygen (DO) measurement, an important indicator in the assessment, implying that third-party monitoring has improved the quality of water environment data and the accuracy of the data. The research in this article provides a reference for third-party participation in environmental governance and proves that the participation of these organizations can reduce data manipulation behaviors of local governments and ensure the effectiveness of environmental data.

Highlights

Environmental monitoring is an important foundation for environmental protection.It is extremely important to ensure the normal operation of monitoring equipment and the authenticity of monitoring data
This paper proposes the following research hypothesis: third-party monitoring will improve the quality of water pollution data and improve the environmental monitoring capability of the government, so that the probability of data manipulation by local governments will be reduced
The McCrary density test was used to detect whether public water pollution data underwent data manipulation at each level of each indicator, and compared the discontinuous changes of water environment data before and after third-party monitoring

Summary

Introduction

Environmental monitoring is an important foundation for environmental protection.It is extremely important to ensure the normal operation of monitoring equipment and the authenticity of monitoring data. Environmental monitoring is an important foundation for environmental protection. Research on water pollution supervision shows that environmental monitoring and law enforcement activities are effective in improving water quality [1]. The newly revised “Water Pollution Prevention and Control Law of the People’s Republic of China” has added regulations on the authenticity and accuracy of monitoring data, the falsification of water pollution detection data still occurs frequently in various places. Much air pollution data manipulation exists in various cities every year, as described by Ghanem et al [5]. In September 2017, the Ministry of Environmental Protection issued the “ImplemenInPlan. Protection issued the “Implementation for the 2017, Separation of Sampling and Measurement of National Surface Water tation.

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion