Businesses in the Taihu Lake area will have to pay heavy fees to discharge pollution into the lake and nearby waterways this year, officials from the Jiangsu environmental protection bureau said yesterday.

The new regulation, approved by the State Environmental Protection Administration and the Ministry of Finance last month, is the first of its kind in the country. It will be implemented initially in Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Zhenjiang and Nanjing, all in Jiangsu Province.

The move is part of a long-awaited campaign to limit the amount of pollution pumped into the region's waterways.