It was learned that Dongjiang lake of Zixing city was selected as a national key support lake of lake ecological protection.

The river and lake ecological protection work was purposely to realize the rehabilitate of rivers and lakes. It was carried out with the principal of “overall planning, protection-oriented, comprehensive policies, and continuous development”. Followed with the “solutions of capital management of river and lake ecological protection” and specified evaluation procedures of provincial level recommendation, preliminary evaluation, and on-site assessment, the State Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Environment Protection organized this 2013 selection work. 20 lakes were qualified to enter the on-site statement stage, and 15 of the 20 ones were finally confirmed the national key support lakes.

Dongjiang lake covers 160 square kilometers water area with a normal storage capacity of 8.12 billion cubic meters. Its water quality kept to be above Class II level of surface water. Dongjiang lake is a typical deep oligotrophic lake with the features of abundant water resource, good quality and important strategic position. It is concerned for the drinking water safety of Hunan province.

In 2001, Hunan Provincial People's Congress promulgated the "Regulations of Dongjiang water environment protection”, which enabled Dongjiang lake to be the first lake with independent protection legislations. Dongjiang Water Environmental Protection Bureau, leadership team of Hunan provincial protection of rivers and lakes, and joint working group of Hunan Dongjiang lake ecological protection were formed by Hunan province afterward. Dongjiang lake water environment protection committee and some relative departments were formed in Chenzhou city and some counties as well. Besides those, specified protection plans, management funds, and etc. were figured out to handle the protection issues. It was learned that after successfully selected as a national key support lake, Dongjiang lake would be granted with 300-500 million yuan central governments’ protection funds to carry out the protection work accordingly.