01
City Water System
Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, had 19.10 million residents at the end of 2025 across 11 districts and 7,434 km². Regulation and operation are separate. The Guangzhou Municipal Water Authority allocates water resources, runs the supply and drainage concession regimes, supervises water quality and leads flood defence, while central-area tap water prices are set by the municipal Development and Reform Commission. The municipally owned Guangzhou Water Investment Group runs water supply, drainage and wastewater treatment for the central districts and Huadu, with close to 70% of the city’s combined capacity. Six other utilities serve the outer districts, and one of them sits outside the municipal group.
02
Resources & Supply
Guangzhou lies where the West, North and East Rivers converge. Plenty of river water passes through, but the city has little of its own. In 2024 its local water resources were 11.677 billion m³, against 145.937 billion m³ flowing in from neighbouring areas. The city’s spatial plan names dependence on this inflow, along with source pollution and saltwater intrusion, as risks to supply security.
Surface water provided 90.1% of supply in 2024 and groundwater only 0.2%. Total water use of 5.992 billion m³ was 28.3% below its 2005 level: industrial use fell by 59.9% while residential use rose. The supply master plan forecasts peak-day demand rising from 9.4 to 12.4 million m³ a day between 2025 and 2035.
03
Wastewater & Stormwater
Guangzhou’s 66 wastewater plants could treat 8.6 million tonnes a day at the end of 2025, up from 8.356 million in 2024, when the water authority ranked that capacity second nationally. Liede, the largest plant in South China at 1.2 million tonnes a day, meets the national Class 1A effluent standard. Nine underground plants in the central area add 1.81 million m³ a day. A major programme has separated stormwater from sewage in the city’s old combined culverts: 431 of 443 had been converted by 2024. Sponge-city measures, which absorb and store rainfall, covered 40.57% of the built-up area in 2024, against a 2025 target of at least 45%.
04
Investment & Resilience
Investment has focused on new sources. The North River diversion, a RMB 2.3 billion, 26 km scheme, began full delivery in July 2024 and feeds the new Huadu waterworks. In June 2024 the Pearl River Delta Water Resources Allocation Project began supplying Nansha, with a design allocation of 531 million m³ a year, ending the district’s reliance on a single waterway. Reservoir works at Shajing, Nanda and Dafengmen are under construction; the Eastern Water Source Project and Wanqingsha waterworks are still preliminary. The city aims to reach 10 million m³ a day of waterworks capacity by 2027. In 2023 it invested RMB 4.59 billion in water supply and RMB 7.43 billion in drainage.
05
Key Challenges
- Reducing dependence on river water from outside the city, which is exposed to source pollution and saltwater intrusion in the dry season.
- Expanding supply capacity ahead of forecast peak-day demand of 12.4 million m³ a day by 2035.
- Completing backup sources for areas that the water authority says still rely on a single conventional source.
- Managing flood and waterlogging risk while sponge-city coverage remains below its 45% target.
06