Rivers and lakes are the lifeblood of a city and form the foundation of its ecological environment. Huai'an City is focusing on comprehensive river and lake governance to build a more beautiful and sustainable landscape.

Huai'an City has implemented special rectification and control over the ecological space of rivers and lakes. Emphasizing remote sensing monitoring and dynamic inspections, the city has verified and addressed 213 remote sensing anomalies of rivers and lakes, identified by provincial and central authorities. It has also systematically tackled 46 provincial annual tasks related to regional river basin issues. Additionally, guidance has been provided to county and district authorities to investigate and verify in-river features, ensuring lawful and compliant classification and handling. Moreover, the city has provided precise services, optimized the approval process for river-related projects, strictly controlled the compliance review of river-related construction projects, and resolutely put an end to the behavior of building without approval and unauthorized approval. Efforts to develop "Happy Rivers and Lakes" have been intensified, with 49 projects scheduled for completion by 2025, aimed at creating an ecological environment characterized by free-flowing rivers, clear waters, green banks, and picturesque views.

At present, Huai'an City has implemented 15 "no flooding and no waterlogging" urban construction projects. All projects have been equipped with operational drainage capacity before the flood season and have passed final acceptance inspections by the end of July. In addition, the city has established a robust flood control framework built on three core systems: it has improved the "1+7" flood control command system, with the main leaders of the municipal government serving as the commander-in-chief, and set up 7 branch command posts to cover key areas; it has clarified the flood control responsibility system, with adjustments to 564 responsibility segments across 9 categories, and clarified and publicly assigned more than 1,200 administrative and technical responsible persons at the municipal and county levels; it has established an emergency rescue system, formed a rescue force with a comprehensive fire rescue team as the main force, professional teams as the backbone, and social forces as supplements, and signed agreements with relevant organizations to form 431 flood control and emergency rescue teams with a total of 10,183 people, building a solid safety line for the flood season.