Private companies to monitor water

Private companies have been put in charge of collecting and analyzing water samples for quality in a bid to prevent interference from local authorities, the Ministry of Environmental Protection said on Monday.

According to a plan from the ministry's China National Environmental Monitoring Center, starting this month third-party agencies will collect samples from rivers, lakes and reservoirs before delivering them to independent labs for random analysis.

The data on water quality will be directly uploaded to the center, which will then release the results to the public, the ministry said.