[Ministry of Ecology and Environment: Surface water quality across the country continues to improve in the first three quarters of this year] On October 29, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment today released the results of the national surface water environmental quality monitoring in the first three quarters. Data show that since the beginning of this year, surface water across the country has generally maintained an improvement trend, and the proportion of high-quality water bodies has increased year-on-year. Overall, from January to September, 86.1% of surface water in the country had excellent water quality of Class I-III, an increase of 1.7 percentage points from the same period last year; the proportion of surface water quality inferior to Class V was 0.8%, a decrease of 0.4 percentage points from the same period last year. The main exceedance indicators are chemical oxygen demand, permanganate index and total phosphorus. The water quality of major river basins is stable but improving. From January to September, the water quality of the southwest rivers, Zhejiang and Fujian rivers, the Yangtze River Basin and the northwest rivers was excellent; the water quality of the Pearl River, Yellow River, Liaohe River, Huaihe River and Haihe River Basin was good; the Songhua River Basin was slightly polluted. Among the 145 monitored key lakes (reservoirs), the number of lakes and reservoirs with water quality of Class I-III accounted for 71.7%, a year-on-year increase of 2.0 percentage points; the number of lakes and reservoirs with water quality worse than Class V accounted for 3.4%, a year-on-year decrease of 0.7 percentage points.