Shanghai looking at ways to make rivers cleaner

0 Comment(s)Print E-mail Shanghai Daily, June 5, 2013
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Shanghai's rivers should look clearer in future after a higher standard of sewage discharge is achieved, officials said yesterday.

However, it will be expensive, and there is, as yet, no timetable for the project.

Currently, the city reaches Level 2 of a national standard, where chemical oxygen demand, a measure of water quality, is below 100 milligrams per liter. Shanghai is aiming to reach Level 1B, where the figure is reduced to 60 milligrams per liter.

"It's not easy to demonstrate the difference of the two standards in terms of the color or smell of water, but with the higher level of processed sewage water discharged to the rivers, the environment and ecology of the river will be improved, which the residents will be able to see," Sun Mingyao, deputy director of the Shanghai Drainage Administration, said yesterday.

But Sun said that upgrading the city's entire sewage network to achieve the higher standard would be expensive and experts were still studying how to implement it.

"The quality of processed sewage water differs among plants. We have some plants that can reach the highest standard, A of Level 1, with the chemical oxygen demand of the processed water lowered to 50 milligrams per liter. But the citywide standard is still Level 2," Sun said. "Upgrading sewage plants is more difficult than building new ones in that we need to maintain the current service while improving treatment, so the cost is huge.

"The higher the standard, the higher the cost of sewage treatment. But the government is encouraging plants to raise their standards with subsidies, about several cents per liter," Sun said. Last year the government paid out 147 million yuan (US$24 million) in subsidies, Sun said.

Meanwhile, Shanghai's sewage disposal capacity is to increase by 800,000 cubic meters per day, the equivalent of 355 standard swimming pools or more than 10 percent of the city's current capacity, with the second phase of Bailonggang Sewage Plant due to start operations later this year, Shanghai Chengtou Waste Water Treatment Co Ltd announced yesterday.

The second phase of Asia's biggest sewage plant will lead the city's efforts to raise sewage discharge standards by achieving Level 1B, the company said.

The increase will bring the capacity of Bailonggang up to 2,800,000 cubic meters per day.

Shanghai currently handles more than 7 million cubic meters of sewage every day with 53 plants across the city, the Shanghai Water Authority said.

Most of the sewage from urban areas is treated before being discharged into rivers but nearly 14 percent of the city's sewage, mostly from suburban areas, is dumped without any treatment.

Officials said work was ongoing to improve the situation.

"The 14 percent is mostly the waste water in the villages in the suburbs where there is no sewage system," Sun said. "We're trying to collect the waste water by using small sewage stations."

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