Sand mining in the Yangtze River has a long history, but mechanical sand mining began in the late 1970 s and gradually formed a trend of large-scale mining in the late 1980 s. In the 1990 s, with the rapid development of the construction of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, the demand for construction sand and gravel increased greatly, and the price of sand rose. Driven by considerable economic interests, various sand mining vessels flocked to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The chaotic situation of indiscriminate mining and digging has a serious impact on the stability of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, flood control safety, navigation safety, and national economic and social development.
Sand mining in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River is mainly distributed in the reach of the Yangtze River in Hubei, Jiangxi, Anhui, Jiangsu and other provinces. According to incomplete statistics, before the ban on mining, the provincial water administrative departments approved a total of 44 sand mining areas, with a total annual sand mining volume of more than 5300 million t. Due to unscrupulous illegal sand mining, the amount of sand mining in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River is far greater than the above figures.
Indiscriminate mining of river sand has aggravated the collapse of the Yangtze River bank, affected the stability of the river regime, endangered the safety of flood control and navigation of the Yangtze River, and seriously threatened the economic development and people's lives and property along the Yangtze River. To this end, in June 2000, the General Office of the State Council issued a circular requiring the people's governments of the provinces (municipalities directly under the Central Government) in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River to take immediate and effective measures to comprehensively control and rectify the sand mining activities in the Yangtze River within their provinces (municipalities directly under the Central Government) and completely ban illegal sand mining activities. In February 2001, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River began to ban river sand mining.
In order to straighten out the management system of sand mining in the Yangtze River, clarify the management responsibilities, intensify the crackdown on illegal sand mining, and standardize and establish a normal sand mining order, the State Council promulgated the "Regulations on the Management of Sand Mining in the Yangtze River" on October 25, 2001 (State Council Decree No. 320), which came into effect on January 1, 2002. At this point, the Yangtze River sand mining and its management began to enter the legal track.