he majority of infrastructure installations in China today mirror those of the United States in the 1950s. The recent national goal to install wastewater treatment plants throughout the country is no exception. The United States achieved its goal by enacting a federal construction grant program; China is doing so by encouraging foreign investment and providing federal funding that totaled nearly $9 billion over the last five years.
With less than 15 percent of the population connected to operational treatment plants, the need for proper wastewater sanitation in China is paramount. In 2000, the central government ordered all cities of more than 500,000 people to treat at least 60 percent of their wastewater by 2005. The success of this mandate has been unclear, as many parts of the country continue to pollute at rates faster than the facilities are being installed.
One site of critical importance is the western city of Chongqing. With a population of 35 million, it is the largest municipality in China, generating nearly 1 billion tons of untreated wastewater a year. Downstream from the city, on the Yangtze River, lies the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydroelectric project.
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| Chongqing Wastewater Treatment Facility (Photo courtesy of Max Luken) |
This complication is presumed to be the main rationale for the Chinese government’s endorsement of a scheme to build 150 new wastewater treatment plants along the Yangtze by 2009. The total cost of the plan is estimated at over $4.5 billion. But the reality of construction has been sobering—as of early 2007, not even half of the facilities had been built.
The pilot plant, located in the Beipei district of Chongqing, has been operational for a year and provides primary treatment to more than 50,000 cubic meters of water per day. This treatment involves multiple screens that remove large pieces of debris and suspended organic material in a sedimentation tank. The plant also uses UV disinfection, meant to reduce the number of disease-causing organisms such as bacteria, spores, and algae. This is a preferred method to chlorine and was selected to avoid adding further chemicals to the water. The national government ranks the water quality resulting from the treatment as 2 out of 5 (the highest rank is 1).
Internationally recognized standards for wastewater treatment include secondary and tertiary levels of treatment. These additional levels are meant to remove remaining organic material and dissolved nitrogen and phosphorus. Due to relatively high installation costs, however, these levels have not been achieved throughout China.
When wastewater containing organic material is treated through anaerobic decomposition—typically during secondary treatment—one of the byproducts is methane gas. Methane can be used as a source of energy and, in many parts of the world, is helping to reduce overall energy costs. When asked about the potential for methane capture and use as a clean energy source, the manager of the Beipei treatment plant noted that, “the process is too costly, and even if enacted would not produce enough methane on site to reduce overall energy costs.” Although methane capture technology is readily available, it requires an initial funding source, typically provided by development banks or international funding mechanisms.
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol lists methane capture at wastewater treatment plants as a viable source of carbon credit. Currently, such carbon offset projects are being developed in India and the Philippines. In China, the majority of CDM projects have focused on either the destruction of HFC-23 (trifluoromethane), a powerful greenhouse gas, or the construction of wind farms. There is growing support for methane to provide the next wave of carbon credits, however, and focusing on newly constructed wastewater treatment plants would be an ideal investment (in addition to methane capture from landfills and coal mines).
The purpose of wastewater treatment is to remove toxins and pollutants from the water and to return it in a purer state. In Chongqing, the Yangtze and Jialing rivers converge beneath the bridges of this famous “Mountain City.” The construction of 150 new wastewater treatment plants in the region would add an additional level of infrastructure to tackle rampant environmental degradation and would serve as an appropriate industrial parallel to the completion of the Three Gorges Dam. As China continues to develop at a breakneck pace, reverence for its environment and the health of its people cannot be overlooked.
Ryan Hodum is a graduate student in Global Environmental Policy at the American University in Washington, D.C.
Outside contributions to China Watch reflect the views of the author, and are not necessarily the views of the Worldwatch Institute.
