Patna, Oct. 19: The civic authorities have pledged to clean up the Ganga ghats in the state capital before Chhath, but the process to sanitise the river would start only after the four-day festival.

The state urban development department has planned to develop a new sewage system to treat around 250 million litres of sewage that the city generates everyday.

Urban development department principal secretary Shashi Shekhar Sharma told The Telegraph: “We want to develop a system that can handle 250 to 300MLD (million litres per day) sewage that Patna generates. Immediately after Chhath, we will start to prepare a detailed project report for the new sewage system. The report would take at least three months to complete. ” Chhath this year begins on October 31

Explaining the sanitation project, Sharma said: “Every household and commercial establishment in Patna would be connected to this system. A large network of sewage pipeline and several new sewage treatment plants would be developed. The treated water would be discharged into the Ganga and the Punpun. The estimated cost of the entire project would be around Rs 1,500 crore.”

Sources said the project would be carried out under the aegis of the National Ganga River Basin Authority. The ministry of environment and forest constituted the authority as a flagship scheme on February 20, 2009.

Environment experts in the city, however, sounded sceptical. R.C. Sinha, chief executive director, Centre of Environment and Nature Conservation, Patna, told The Telegraph: “The functioning of the sewage system in Patna and the rest of the state has been disappointing. The existing sewage treatment plants are under utilised because of deficiency in the sewage collection system.”