Repair and Rehabilitation of Sewage Treatment Plants

Anil Kumar, Regional Manager, S.L .Goel, Deputy Project Manager, Milind Kulkarni, Repair & Rehabilitation Expert, and K.B. Tandon, Project Engineer, MWH India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi

The repair and rehabilitation of civil structures of sewage treatment plants (20 & 40 MGD and 4 digesters of 12 MGD) at Keshopur in Delhi has been taken up with a basic view to ensure that by doing so it is possible to extend the life of the treatment plant infrastructure by at least 25 years. This coupled with a retrofit of the electrical, mechanical, instrumentation, piping and pumping works does help in making these plants operational once again at a much lower costs than would be required for construction of new plants of the same capacity.

There are a large number of such treatment plants in similar state in the country and which are not being used on account of being in a dilapidated condition. A proper survey, followed by estimation, specification and quantification of such works can be done. This further followed by tenders for repair and restoration work will pave the way for reutilization of such infrastructures and assist the cash strapped Municipal Corporations and Local Bodies to effectively utilize their resources in a better way and put in place treatment facilities at much lower and affordable costs.

Project Background

Yamuna Action Plan, Phase-II (YAPII) was formulated after the YAP-I phase to further address the problem of pollution of River Yamuna, particularly in the 22 km Delhi stretch and downstream up to Agra. The sewerage works proposed under YAP-II are in Delhi and Agra. The Delhi stretch of Yamuna is considered as the most polluted stretch, with Agra being the second most critical stretch.

The main objective of Yamuna Action Plan, Phase-II is further abatement of pollution of River Yamuna generally by way of increasing the capacity of sewerage system through rehabilitation of old sewers / pumping stations, construction of new sewers and increasing the sewage treatment capacity by rehabilitation of the existing sewage treatment plants and constructing a few new sewage treatment plants.

The cost of proposed YAP-II has been estimated at a sum of 6,370 million rupees, which shall be in the form of soft loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to the Government of India.

National River Conservation Department (NRCD), Ministry of Environment & Forests, Govt. of India, the executing agency for the said loan, have allocated a portion of the proceeds of this loan to the project implementing agency that is Delhi Jal Board (DJB) for implementation of the said works in Delhi. DJB will utilise these funds for physical implementation of identified works which includes finalisation of planning, design and execution / rehabilitation of several trunk sewers and treatment plants.