Toxic emerging contaminants (ECs) and non-toxic dissolved organic matter (DOM) are present in the source water. The key to purification of source water is to realize low cost and efficient priority removal of toxic emerging contaminants. To break this bottleneck, Cu and Al metal species were modulated in situ into a dual reaction centers (DRCs) catalyst (CA-CN) with surface electronrich/-poor microregions in this work, and the catalyst was applied to the removal of trace ECs in water. It showed that CA-CN had excellent degradation performance for various trace ECs with the assistance of trace amounts of H_2O_2, especially for BPA, which could be removed over 80% within 5 minutes. In addition, preferential removal of ECs was achieved in the actual source waters configured with trace ECs. Series of characterization techniques showed that ECs acted as electron donors, and interface interaction occurred through π-π structures with electron-poor centers on the catalyst surface and transfer electrons, and then the electrons were transferred to electron-rich centers via C—O—M (metal species) bond bridges on the catalyst surface, activating H_2O_2 and dissolved oxygen adsorbed therein. The more important role of H_2O_2 in the whole process was to trigger the chain reaction of degrading ECs. This discovery breaks through the bottleneck of traditional source water purification and provides a direction for development of new high-efficiency and low-consumption water purification processes.