Bhubaneswar: Marking a significant stride towards achieving comprehensive sanitation in urban areas, the Odisha Government has set up 100 Septage Treatment Plants across 99 cities of the State. These 100 treatment plants have a combined capacity to treat 1,767 KLD of faecal sludge and septage daily. All these SeTPs are based on modern energy-efficient technologies that will ensure minimal operation and maintenance.
The Housing & Urban Development (HUD) Department had started the Faecal Sludge and Septage Management (FSSM) initiative with CPR and BMGF in 2015. The Department has scaled up the initiative to cover all the urban areas in the State by the end of this year.
“It is an incredibly proud and joyous moment for the H&UD Dept, Govt of Odisha for completing and operationalizing 100 Septage Treatment Plants across 99 cities of the state on 31st March,2022”, said G Mathi Vathanan, Principal Secretary, Housing and Urban Development.
“These 100 plants have a combined capacity to treat 1,767 KLD of faecal sludge and septage daily. I am waiting to see completion of SeTPs in all cities before Dec’22. These treatment facilities are and will be managed by Mission Shakti women/transgender groups, who are our proud community partners”, he said.
Untreated faecal sludge and septage from towns and cities is one of the major causes of surface and ground water pollution thereby posing threat to health, hygiene and environmental outcomes. As a majority of the households depend on onsite sanitation facilities wherein safe management of human waste is of utmost importance to make cities healthy and liveable. Besides, rising urban population and increasing access to sanitation exert pressure on the existing sewerage management systems.
In this context, FSSM has been introduced as an alternative solution for efficient liquid waste management in urban areas where setting up sewer networks seemed unviable due to several reasons such as high cost, longer and complex construction phase and less density of population.
FSSM is an approach for end-to-end management of fecal waste to arrest harmful impact of poor sanitation in cases where provision of sewer network is unfeasible or takes longer duration.
CPR India has congratulated the HUD for completing and operationalizing 100 SeTPs across 99 cities of the state.
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