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Emission trading is one of the most effective alternatives to controlling water pollution. Water environmental functional zone (WEFZ) is used to determine the water quality standard and identify the zone boundary for each river or reach. In this study, a new emission trading scheme was addressed based on WEFZ, accounting for both the temporal dimension and water quality control. A temporal factor of emission trading was proposed based on variations in the environmental capacity within a year by dividing the year into three periods, including high, normal, and low periods of environmental capacity. During each period, emission trading was implemented exclusively. A water quality-control scheme was suggested based on the water quality requirement in the water functional zone, in which the water quality at the downstream boundary of the zone was required to meet the water standard following auto-purification in the stream. Two methods of calculating water quality control are addressed for point-source pollution and non-pointsource pollution. The calculated temporal dimension and water quality control were located in Dongxi River of the Daning Watershed in the Three Gorges Watershed. The high period was . The results from the water quality calculation demonstrated that the discharge of point-source and non-point-source pollutions led to an excess of common contaminants at the downstream boundary of WEFZ. The temporal and spatial factors above should be incorporated into the emission trading scheme based on WEFZ.

The efficacy of traditional effluent trading systems is questionable due to their neglect of seasonal hydrological variation and the creation of upstream hot spots within a watershed. Besides, few studies have been conducted to distinguish the impacts of each influencing factor on effluent trading systems outputs. In this study, a water environmental functional zone-based effluent trading systems framework was configured and a comprehensive analysis of its influencing factors was conducted. This proposed water environmental functional zone-based effluent trading systems was then applied for the control of chemical oxygen demand in the Beiyun River watershed, Beijing, China. Optimal trading results highlighted the integration of water quality constraints and different hydrological seasons, especially for downstream dischargers. The optimal trading of each discharger, in terms of pollutant reduction load and abatement cost, is greatly influenced by environmental and political factors such as background water quality, the location of river assessment points, and tradable discharge permits. In addition, the initial permit allowance has little influence on the market as a whole but does impact the individual discharger. These results provide information that is critical to understanding the impact of policy design on the functionality of an effluent trading systems.

Conventional effluent trading systems (ETSs) between point sources (PSs) and nonpoint sources (NPSs) are often unreliable because of the uncertain characteristics of NPSs. In this study, a new framework was established for PS-NPS ETSs, and a comprehensive analysis was conducted by quantifying the impacts of the uncertainties associated with the water assimilative capacity (WAC), NPS emissions, and measurement effectiveness. On the basis of these results, the uncertain characteristics of NPSs would result in a less cost-effective PS-NPS ETS during most hydrological periods, and there exists a clear transition occurs from the WAC constraint to the water quality constraint if these stochastic factors are considered. Specifically, the emission uncertainty had a greater impact on PSs, but an increase in the emission or abatement uncertainty caused the abatement efforts to shift from NPSs toward PSs. Moreover, the error transitivity from the WAC to conventional ETS approaches is more obvious than that to the WEFZ-based ETS. When NPSs emissions are relatively high, structural BMPs should be considered for trading, and vice versa. These results are critical to understand the impacts of uncertainty on the functionality of PS-NPS ETSs and to provide a trade-off between the confidence level and abatement efforts.

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Inland waterway maintenance could guarantee channel dimension and maintain navigation conditions. With the continuous increase of channel mileage, inland waterway maintenance gradually became more frequent and scale-up, as well. The maintenance activities would inevitably cause adverse environment impacts on waters, and disturb the ecosystem. Therefore, it was necessary to implement the green maintenance to reduce the negative impacts in the maintenance process. However, the research on green maintenance of inland waterway was not systematic and impeccable. This paper proposed a solution for the problem above. Firstly identified the environmental impacts of maintenance based on the analysis of maintenance process. Secondly the notion and principles of green maintenance are put forward, according to the concept of green transportation and green channel. Thirdly, the study constructed the technical framework of green maintenance and summarized the major measures for green maintenance. An last, implementation path of green maintenance was addressed including standard-setting, establishing system management, technology research and development, etc.

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