Abstract: East Lake in Wuhan City is one of the largest urban lakes in China.Its water ecological environment is closely related to the lake ecosystem in the central Changjiang River Basin, and also has a significant impact on the environmental carrying capacity and urban sustainable development of Wuhan City.With the rapid development of three major industries and the acceleration of urbanization process in East Lake basin, the frequency of lake resource consumption is increasing rapidly, and the carrying capacity of lake water environment is becoming increasingly insufficient.This study aims to propose an effective and sustainable "East Lake Pattern" for watershed water environment treatment based on the typical characteristics of large shallow urban lakes.East Lake is faced with outstanding problems as a large amount of tail water from sewage treatment plants entering the lake, serious overflow pollution during rainstorm, sediment pollution in local lake areas, serious degradation of water ecosystem, and incomplete comprehensive management mechanism.Following the water environment treatment concept of "basin coordination and systematic treatment",with the core goal of limitation on pollutant carrying capacity and water quality control, key technical measures have been proposed including top-level design of watershed planning, gray-green-blue system of water and bank co-treatment, precise environmentally friendly sediment desilting, and initial habitat regulation of aquatic ecological restoration.Besides, two important regulation systems of institutional guarantee and intelligent supervision have been formed.Results show that since the official launch of the treatment project of East Lake in 1985,the overall water quality has been improved from worse than Grade V at the end of the 20th century to Grade III～IV in 2019,and the coverage rate of aquatic plants has increased from the extreme value of 0.7% in 2010 to 3.3% in 2019.The water environment treatment of East Lake has achieved significant results, which can provide a reference and guidance for other shallow urban rivers and lakes.Finally, to improve the water environment continuously and realize long-term limpidity of East Lake, the work focus and directions for the following treatment have been proposed.