BEIJING, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- China's environmental watchdog plans to significantly raise fines for polluting in an effort to protect the country's much-threatened drinking water resources.

    Maximum fines to individuals or companies, who discharge highly toxic pollutants into drinking water resources, were raised five fold to 500,000 yuan (about 67,600 U.S. dollars), according to a draft regulation publicized by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA).

    Those, who dump industrial residue or urban waste into drinking water resources, or store solid waste or other pollutants below the highest water line along the banks or at the beach land of rivers, lakes, canals and reservoirs, face a fine of up to 200,000yuan, 20 times the current amount.

    The draft also lifts the restriction on the maximum amount of fines for enterprises blamed for water pollution accidents. It said that fines for such businesses would vary from 20 to 30 percent of the direct economic loss according to the severity of the incident.

    Enterprises should bear all costs for containing accidents and those causing serious water pollution accidents would be closed.

    Fines for enterprises causing serious water pollution incidents are not allowed to exceed one million yuan, according to the existing regulation on water pollution control.

    Inexpensive fines against polluters have been open to debate in China as many say they cannot effectively stop environmental violations. Environmental officials said that compared with the economic benefits of illegally discharging pollutants, the current level of financial punishment was just "a drop in the bucket" for most enterprises.

    To weed out local protectionism of rampant water violations, the draft emphasizes the responsibilities of grass-root governments.

    It asks local governments to step up protection efforts, to improve monitoring and management of drinking water resources and to regularly issue water quality reports to the public.