We assessed the impact on eutrophication of surface waters resulting from land use changes, urbanization, industrialization, and growing population in the Taihu Lake Basin. The analyses showed a 9% increase of the population in the region in the 1990s and the GDP per capita augmented in average five times between 1990 and 2000. The main land use changes account for a 9.3% decrease in area of agricultural land. This land is mostly lost to urbanization around towns. A retrospective analysis of changes in built-up area in the city agglomerations of Wuxi and Suzhou displays a 50% enlargement of the urban area since 1980, of which 30% was realized in the 1990s. These changes also contributed to higher pollution of surface waters in the region. This is documented from the results of water monitoring, which is being run since 1987 and includes 18 sampling sites in the Taihu, Wuli and Meiliang lakes, Significantly increasing trends were found for the values of all measured parameters, namely biological oxygen demand, chemical oxygen demand, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus. Since 1995 all waters belong to the worst category of quality - category V, except for the Taihu lake-centre which is classified as category IV. Any expectations for reversing the eutrophicaton process in the Taihu Lake Basin will collide with plans for fast economic development of the region also in the near future.