1: Understanding China’s Wastewater Crisis

Chapter 1: Understanding China’s Wastewater Crisis

Wastewater is often out of sight and out of mind, disappearing from our lives via pipes and underground sewers for treatment in plants often situated on a city’s fringe. But how well are wastewater systems truly managed? Inadequate wastewater systems can cripple cities, leaving them vulnerable to flooding, surface water pollution, and aquifer contamination. Today, inefficiently managed wastewater systems can drain more than a third of municipal electricity. Managing wastewater has been a challenge since people began living in cities. Thousands of years ago, most metropolises dealt with their wastewater by putting it directly in rivers. With some notable exceptions, such as Ancient Rome’s drainage channel, the Cloaca Maxima (“greatest sewage”), this method of management persisted into the late 19th century. Washington DC, for example, constructed its combined sewer system in the 1890s. However, the system did not include treating wastewater, which was discharged directly into the Potomac River. Like its western counterparts, wastewater treatment in China during the late 1800s and early 1900s was also rudimentary, with cities releasing it into rivers. Capitalizing on poor urban sewer management, rural farmers often carried wastewater sludge, dubbed “night soil,” from the cities back to their village to fertilize crops. Sludge not used as night soil went into local rivers. By the 1970s, this sludge dumping, combined with China’s rapid industrial urbanization and diversifying agricultural development, began taking a severe toll on the country’s waterways.