Shanghai will spend 300 million yuan (US$38.46 million) building sewage pipelines in the suburbs this year and plans to spend the same amount next year to improve sewage treatment and collection standards in the increasingly urbanized areas.

The pipelines are part of the city's efforts to improve the infrastructure and water quality in its rural areas, where it plans to build several satellite towns to complement the downtown core.

"The pollution of waterways and residential sewage treatment are still big problems in the suburbs due to insufficient infrastructure construction," the Shanghai Water Authority said in a statement yesterday.

"The focus at this stage should be to complete the sewage system there."

By the end of last year, the city hosted 30 sewage treatment plants in its suburban areas, including several upstream of the Huangpu River to protect the city's major water source. Their combined capacity is just one million cubic meters a day.

More than 1,000 kilometers of new sewage pipes will be built by the end of next year, as the city aims to cover 90 percent of its suburban towns by 2008, when the sewage treatment rate there should top 60 percent.

Expansion of one sewage plant in Jiading District kicked off yesterday, World Water Day, which will cost 80 million yuan (US$10.35 million) to double its capacity to 100,000 tons a day.

The work is scheduled to finish next year, at which time the plant should be able to serve around 600,000 residents in a 190-square-kilometer area, according to investor Shanghai Dazhong Public Utilities Co.

Altogether five new sewage plants will start construction this year in the suburbs. Construction will also wrap up on another four plants that began last year.

Online monitoring devices, which will keep a close eye on the sewage plants' operation around the clock and send the information to downtown surveillance centers, will also be built, officials said.

Shanghai already leads the country in sewage treatment rate, but it is still far behind the standards of many developed countries.

The city discharged six million cubic meters of sewage a day on average last year, with the city-wide treatment rate reaching 71 percent on average. The goal is to increase the treatment rate to 80 percent next year and 90 percent by 2020.

(Shanghai Daily March 23, 2007)