China launched Tuesday what it said was its toughest water management program for the Yellow River in a bid to stem rampant over-exploitation along the nation's second longest waterway.

The new regulations spell out tighter rules on water allocation and usage, emergency management and the accountability of authorities in charge, central government officials told a press conference.

The officials said the program's regulations, backed by central government laws rather than local directives, were the first of their kind in China.

The governments of the 11 provinces through which the river flows will be ordered to monitor water flows and impose the tougher restrictions on polluting industries.

They said it aimed to improve water management throughout the country, as the Yellow River stretches 5,464 kilometers (3,387 miles) from the Tibetan plateau across the nation.

"It is of great importance in the realization of the economization, high efficiency and sustainable utilization of water resource across the country," Li Guoying, head of the Yellow River Conservancy Commission, told reporters.

Li said excessive exploitation of water resources of the "Mother River" of China had resulted in water drying up completely in various sections of the lower reaches for over 1,000 days between 1972 and 1999.

Although the phenomenon has not occurred since then due to a number of intervention measures such as water diversion projects and water price rises, Li said the river could dry up again.

"Considering possible future exacerbation of supply and demand problem in water resources, increased industrial usage and further decrease of water volume, it would be quite difficult to guarantee there won't be water stoppage again," he said.

The latest measures come after years of campaigns to clean up the river, most of which appear to have had little impact.

A government report last year said more than 72 percent of the water in the Yellow River — which supplies 12 percent of China's 1.3 billion population and 15 percent of its farmland — was unfit for drinking.