Status, Trend and Strategy on Municipal Wastewater Management in China

The rapid development of economy in China at the expense of consuming huge amount of energy and resources, water resource in particular, which has resulted in the production and discharge of increasing amount of wastewater to the water environment. In order to effectively control the increasing water pollution trend, the State Council has stipulated that all the cities with population over 500,000 should reach wastewater treatment rate of 60% by 2005, and all the cities should reach the rate of 60% by 2010, of which Capital Beijing and all the province capital cities and important tourism cities should reach 70% then. By the end of 2005, of the 661 cities in China, 393 have built and operated municipal wastewater treatments with a total number of 790 sets, total treatment capacity of $80.91{\times}106m^3/d$ and total treatment rate of > 48%. Other 73 cities have started the construction of municipal wastewater treatment plants, and other 168 cities have started to prepare, planning and design of wastewater treatment plants. Most of municipal wastewater treatment plants in big cities in China operate normally and perform well with good quality of effluent in terms of wastewater treatment train, but the sewage sludge treatment is usually poor with big problems. It has been found that the small scale WWTPs using activated sludge process in the towns are usually operated and maintained abnormally because of lack of fund, skilled operators and energy. It is therefore suggested that the small scale MWWTPs in small cities and towns adopt appropriate technologies, of which the most available ones are multi-stage ponds, constructed wetlands and the combination of them for further purification and reuse of treated wastewater.