SHENYANG - Northeast China's Liaoning province is poised to implement the most stringent regulations in its history to address the over-exploitation of groundwater.

Liaoning provincial government announced on Wednesday that it will strengthen administration of groundwater use. These regulations are mainly focused on limiting the total use of groundwater and increasing water-use efficiency.

By 2015, the province will shut down all of the region's underground water projects except for those used in emergencies, according to a plan made by local authorities. A total of nearly 3,800 existing projects will be closed, which will prevent the extraction of more than 1.2 billion cubic meters of underground water in the following years.