Liaoning Province, one of China's heavy industry bases, will build 19 sewage plants by 2000 capable of treating two-thirds of the wastewater produced by the whole province.

Liaoning, a coastal province along the Bohai Sea, an interior sea in northeast China, already has nine sewage plants under construction.

A newly-built sewage plant with a capacity of handling 220,000 tons of untreated water daily has been put into operation in Anshan city, China's steel empire.

Currently more than half of the polluted water in the province runs directly from factories into rivers.

The provincial government has asked eight cities located in the drainage area of Liaohe River, which runs across the province, to build sewage plants. Any cities that do not have sewage plants will be forbidden to build new hotels, restaurants and other buildings.

China has more than 30 administrative decrees on environmental protection and had 500 water pollution control projects for a number of major coastal cities and lakes during the Ninth Five- Year Plan (1996-2000), which called for 56 billion yuan in spending.

China spent more than 80 billion yuan (about 9.6 billion US dollars) last year on the environment, more than one percent of the country's GDP. (Xinhua)