India Plans $1.3-Billion Sewage Plants in Towns Along the Ganges

India plans to order 80 billion-rupees ($1.3 billion) of sewage plants before next June to clean waste water in 118 towns on the banks of the Ganges, its holiest river, according to the nation’s water ministry.

The government, which is working on 50 treatment projects, will call for tenders to build another 68 sewage plants by next month, according to a presentation made by the water ministry. The remaining tenders will be out by June next year, it said.

Funds will be made available under the Namami Gange plan to operate and maintain projects for at least 10 years, the government said. India’s cabinet last week cleared 200 billion rupees of funding to clean the Ganges, which houses 43 percent of the nation’s 1.24 billion population along its banks. India has spent 41.7 billion rupees to clean the river since the early 1980s.

Asia’s third-largest economy has so far built capacity to treat only about a third of the wastewater it generates. Its market for wastewater treatment plants will reach $2.1 billion next year from $1.4 billion in 2013, according to consultants TechSci Research.

Work on waste plants in eight cities including Allahabad, Haridwar, Patna, Kanpur and Varanasi will begin in the next three months. Waste treatment capacity for 4 billion liters a day will be completed before the country’s next general elections in 2019, the presentation indicated. The government has sought donations from individuals and companies to clean the river, it said.

A new law with criminal provisions to control pollution in the river is being drafted, the government said. An ecological task force comprising four battalions of military veterans will be formed to protect the river, it said.