Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Decentralised wastewater management using constructed wetlands in Nepal


In Nepal, the Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO) with technical support from a Nepali Ph.D Scholar from University of Natural Resource and Applied Life Sciences Vienna introduced CW for wastewater treatment in 1997 by constructing the first plant at Dhulikhel Hospital (Shrestha, 1999).

Since then, the interest in this technology has been growing and more than a dozen constructed wetlands have been established for various applications such as the treatment of hospital wastewater, grey water, septage, landfill leachate, institutional wastewater and municipal wastewater.


The first constructed wetland treatment plant in Dhulikhel was designed to treat 10 m3 /day of wastewater but it is successfully treating more than four times that amount. (Shrestha et. al, 2000) Satisfied with the performance of the treatment plant, the hospital is now expanding the capacity of the plant.

Recently, ENPHO with support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), UNHABITAT, WaterAid Nepal, Madhyapur Thimi Municipality and the local people have established the first community-based wastewater treatment system in Nepal using this technology. The Urban Environment Improvement Project (UEIP) which is being implemented in eight urban
centres with the assistance ADB is now in the process of constructing 18 more plants in these towns. A list of operating CWs in Nepal is given in Table 2. (Shrestha and Shrestha, 2004).



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