As Phnom Penh Grows, So Does Its Sewage Problem
Since 1998, Phnom Penh’s population has doubled to more than 2 million. High-rise buildings have popped up in the city’s center and housing developments have been hastily erected. Yet the city’s antiquated, decades-old drainage system has undergone little improvement in that time and experts say the rapid urban growth currently underway could outpace the drainage system’s ability to channel rain and the increasing amount of water out of Phnom Penh. Although the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has been working with City Hall since 1999 to improve the drainage system, there is still no plan to install a wastewater treatment plant in order to prevent the vast amounts of raw sewage being pumped into the city’s lakes and waterways. Adding further complications, City Hall has no complete underground plans of the drainage network and possesses limited means to ensure that piping is properly maintained. Authorities have no data on how much sewage the city currently produces. … JICA is currently constructing 20 km of additional piping in central Phnom Penh. Once a toilet is flushed, the wastewater travels down the pipes, through open canals or the underground drainage system and eventually arrives in Boeng Trabek, where morning glory and lotus plants partially purify the sewage through natural process. Plants in the reservoir absorb the discarded water’s bacterial nutrients and break down the waste before it is funneled, black and fetid, through the Boeng Trabek pumping station. The Contents are then emptied into Boeng Tampoun and finally ejected into the Tonle Bassac and Tonle Sap rivers. … “Phnom Penh City has been developing very fast and many commercial and industrial activities have been located in the downtown and peri-urban areas and the wastewater from these activates is generally high contamination,” said Seng Solsdy, a program officer from JICA, in an email. “With this situation, the construction of a waste-water treatment plant is very important for treating the wastewater from the city before discharging it to the river and to avoid impacts on the environment and people’s health.” … Last year, alone the total value of approved construction projects nationwide increased by 72 percent to 2.11 billion, compared to 1.23 billion in 2011. … Noun Rithy, CEO of Bonna Realty Group, agreed that many private developments often leave the issue of drainage as an afterthought. This is coupled with the fact that municipal authorities do very few of their own checks on the drainage provisions of new projects. …
