Society

61 cities short of sewage treatment facilities

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-12-15 07:21

BEIJING - Dozens of Chinese cities have failed to build sewage treatment facilities this year, though China is making great progress in its urbanization, according to officials in the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) Tuesday.

Related readings:  Clean-up bid for Yangtze set to begin  China cracks down on illegal sewage dumping  China to invest $1.76b in rural environment protection  China to spend $2.2b more in sewage treatment

Across the country, 61 cities, counties and large towns are still short of sewage treatment facilities and continue discharging untreated waste water into the environment, the ministry said Tuesday.

Nearly half of those cities come from Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces, as well as economically developed Guangdong Province, according to MOHURD.

China currently has 4,254 sewage treatment plants with a daily treatment capacity of 226 million cubic meters. Meanwhile, 1,849 sewage treatment projects with a treatment capacity of 46.6 million cubic meters are still under construction, latest MOHURD statistics indicate.

Local authorities have increased their sewage treatment capacity by 16.58 million cubic meters during the first nine months of this year, exceeding the Chinese central government's annual growth target of 15 million cubic meters, according to MOHURD.

About 28 percent of China's urban sewage was untreated last year, according to figures released by the Ministry of Environmental Protection in September this year.

China planned to spend 15 billion yuan ($2.25 billion) in the first half of this year to beef up sewage treatment facilities, following its investment of 7.8 billion yuan ($1.17 billion) last year.