Abstract: In recent years, China's water environment quality has continued to improve, but water environment risks and management and control situation are still severe. Sudden water environment accidents such as chemical plant explosions and tailings leakage occur frequently, and cumulative pollution risks such as toxic and harmful pollutants exceed the standard. This article focuses on the risks of water environmental pollution, and sorts out the outstanding issues that affect the promotion of pollution risk management of water environment. It should be pointed out that the operability and prevention and control of some laws and regulations need to be improved, the connection between management systems and institutions needs to be strengthened, basic research and supporting technical standardization are insufficient, enterprises are not sufficiently proactive in risk prevention and control, and the base of river basin risks is unclear, etc. Accordingly targeted strategic countermeasures are proposed, including strengthening the top-level design and coordinating the three linkages of management systems and systems, strengthening scientific research in four aspects including environmental criteria standards/risk assessment/monitoring/emergency water treatment, establishing an active prevention and control mechanism of risk with environmental liability insurance and damage assessment as the core, conducting risk surveys in key water areas to find out the bottom line. The proposed strategic route of pollution risk management of water environment highlights the advancement of environmental risk prevention and control measures and the integration of existing environmental management systems, and the overall promotion of risk management of water environment.