There is no property in remote rural areas.

Rural environmental improvement has been going on for a long time. Some rural areas finally have their own sanitation workers and garbage trucks, and the streets have become clean. Whether farmers take a walk after dinner or commute every day, they feel much more comfortable.

However, a good living environment is inseparable from financial support. Following the garbage charge, the management of rural sewage charge was formally put on the agenda at the first rural water environment governance forum recently. In other words, rural "paid sewage" is already on the way.

In fact, improving the living environment in rural areas is a good thing for most farmers. Rural environmental treatment, especially sewage treatment, how to treat it next, how to charge it, and what the charging standard is, all of which are related to the actual interests of farmers.

What changes have rural environmental governance ushered in?

The peasant collective is actually an autonomous organization. Although people sometimes help each other, most of them "sweep the snow at the front door", which is also the reason why domestic garbage and sewage were often treated by farmers themselves in the past. However, with the continuous improvement of rural environmental improvement policies, rural environmental management and maintenance began to be handled by individuals and changed to unified treatment, which is the so-called "property" rural life. The direct result of this change is the gradual increase of paid items.

At the same time, compared with cities, rural areas do not have a perfect and complicated sewer system, which makes farmers often have to dig deep sewage wells to meet their daily sewage demand. This may not only cause environmental pollution, but also reduce the permeability of sewage wells year by year with years of use. Finally, farmers have no choice but to pump out the sewage when it rains, or use long water pipes to discharge the sewage into idle land or deep ditches, causing secondary pollution.

Generally speaking, the maintenance and governance of rural environment is tending to be "property-oriented". At the same time, due to the lack of sewers, the problem of rural sewage treatment has reached an urgent need to be solved. These are all changes in rural environmental governance in recent years. It is worth mentioning that the unified "market-oriented" governance of rural environment is not only convenient to manage, but also the economic affordability of farmers is the key to the long-term effective operation of measures.

What are the policy basis and specific measures for "paid sewage discharge" in rural areas?

In the Five-year Action Plan for Renovation and Improvement of Rural Human Settlements (202 1-2025), the state clearly proposed to encourage qualified areas to carry out systematic, professional and socialized management and protection, promote the infrastructure construction of urban and rural human settlements, and make overall planning and unified management and protection operations. The "socialized unified management and operation" in this measure provides a policy and market access basis for rural "sewage payment". Next, the rural environmental improvement market is likely to be further subdivided.

In addition, at the first rural water environment governance forum, the state clearly proposed to establish and improve the rural domestic sewage governance mechanism, giving priority to the governance of villages with large populations. This measure shows that in rural areas close to cities and with high population density, it is noted that after May this year, rural sewage discharge will be gradually treated in a market-oriented way, while for rural areas in remote areas, local "resource-based" treatment will be encouraged.

What should farmers pay attention to when finalizing the "paid sewage discharge" in rural areas?

One is the charging standard of "paid sewage discharge" in rural areas, which is decided by all localities themselves. In general, the larger the family, the more they pay. The other is that in some rural areas, no matter how long you live, you have to pay the account of your village. For example, if you go out to work for a long time and no one lives at home, you have to pay.