Shanghai began work yesterday on a 2.2-billion-yuan (US$286 million) upgrade designed to turn its Bailonggang Sewage Treatment Plant into the country's biggest cleanup facility.

The project will improve both the quantity and the quality of the plant's treatment capacity. When the upgrade goes into operation next year, the facility's discharges into the Yangtze River are expected to be two-thirds cleaner than they are today.

The water that leaves the plant will still not be drinkable, however, and the city will still have a long way to go before all of its river discharges are properly treated, officials acknowledged.

Many construction sites, factories and lavatories avoid government watchdogs and send highly polluted sewage directly into Shanghai's waterways, authorities said.

"We want to gradually improve the quantity and quality of the city's sewage treatment," Mai Suihai, general manager of the Shanghai South Municipal Sewage Co, which runs the project, said yesterday.

The Bailonggang Sewage Treatment Plant is located along the northeast coast of the Pudong New Area.

As one of Shanghai's four major sewage plants, Bailonggang provides preliminary treatment to 1.2 million tons of effluent daily, handling one-fifth of the city's discharges.

After the upgrade, the plant will be capable of treating two million tons of sewage a day when the improvements are completed in June 2008. Post-treatment water quality will be raised to the point where the discharges could be used for agricultural and industrial purposes.

The Zhuyuan Sewage Treatment Plant in the northern part of Pudong is the city's biggest such facility at present, with daily treatment capacity of 1.7 million tons.

The Bailonggang effort is part of Shanghai's plan to improve dozens of sewage plants by 2010 so they can treat 80 percent of the city's effluent.

Shanghai is now capable of treating only 72 percent of its sewage; the rest is dumped directly into the Yangtze River or the East China Sea.

The Shanghai Water Authority also plans to enhance control over those who discharge sewage without treatment.

Fu Jianrong, head of the authority's publicity department, said the government encourages residents to dial a special hotline (12319) to report illegal dumping.

(Shanghai Daily May 11, 2007)