The Current Situation and Improvement Strategies of Shanghai's Municipal Wastewater Treatment System

About six million m3 of municipal sewage is discharged every day in Shanghai, with 2.5 million m3 of it free from any treatment. This has caused serious water pollution in the city, damaging industrial production, public health and urban amenities, directly causing economic loss and constraining Shanghai's development. Improving municipal wastewater treatment system effectively and economically is the key for resolving these problems. Based on a field investigation and available statistical data, this paper attempts to identify the problems with current situation of municipal wastewater treatment in Shanghai, and present some ideas on technological measures and policies to improve the situation through the forecast of the future trends of wastewater discharge and in the light of experiences in other countries. The main problems include: the disposal capacity of Shanghai's Municipal Sewerage Systems lags far behind city's requirement; residential wastewater keeps increasing and becomes the focus to resolve the problems of municipal wastewater; wastewater discharged from hotels and restaurants, Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) has not been under control yet; and current financing and contraction system can not satisfy the demand of municipal sewerage development. Ideas on technology choice (large-scale wastewater treatment plant, community plant or Johkaso), wastewater reuse system, sewerage charge, Built-Operation-Transfer (BOT) and Private Finance Initiative (PFI) are discussed as improvement strategies in this paper.