Quzhou in East China's Zhejiang province ranked 9th among 339 prefecture-level cities in the report on national surface water quality in the first half of the year released by Ministry of Ecology and Environment, local media reported on July 21.

Quzhou's ranking rose 17 places from the previous quarter, hitting a record high.

From January to June, among the city's 21 monitoring sections of surface water above the municipal control that were included in the assessment, all were classified as Grade I-III. Specifically, 23.8 percent of the surface water was classified as Grade I, 71.4 percent was classified as Grade II, and 4.8 percent was classified as Grade III.

The water qualification rate of the 15 provincial control sections in the city reached 100 percent, of which 93.3 percent of the surface water was classified as Grade I-II and 6.7 percent was classified as Grade III.