Bhubaneswar, May 28: The municipal corporation has decided to construct the city's first sewage treatment plant at Kalinga Nagar.

The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation will build the plant in association with the Japan International Co-operation Agency (Jica). It will have a capacity to treat around 48 million litres of sewage a day. The authorities have identified a land at Kalinga Nagar for the purpose.

"We have already come up with a city sanitation plan with special focus on sewage management. At present, we use a temporary dumping site for disposing of sludge. Work on the plant at Kalinga Nagar will begin in a month or two, and it will hopefully be completed next year," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.

The administration is also planning to construct nine pumping stations. Land for three such facilities has been identified in various parts of the city. The pumping stations will lift the sewage to a higher elevation in order to allow transportation of the same. The sewage will be fed and stored in a sealed underground pit and thereafter transported to the plant. Environmentalist Alok Mohanty said: "The administration should have done this much earlier, but better late than never! It is good that we are finally going to have a plant to treat hazardous sewage that lead to major pollution of the environment."

Besides, the civic body has also been working on laying an underground sewer network that would transport the sewage safely without harming the surface or ground water. Work on laying the 160km sewer network in the city is on.

The government has packaged the project of constructing the sewer network, sewage treatment plant and the pumping stations for the twin cities of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar.

The state government will spend Rs 323.96 crore in the process, which include construction of two more sewage treatment plants in Cuttack with 33 pumping stations.

The executing agency will construct the plants and take care of its operation and maintenance for seven years. "The plants are being executed under the integrated sanitation improvement project of the state. The projects will be executed in phases. The sewer lines are being built and work on the work on the treatment plant will start shortly," said a civic official. The water-borne disease, jaundice, had affected more than 60 people in Bhubaneswar and 200 in Cuttack last year and this is why a specific strategy for the safe management of sewage and effluents is vital.