Shanghai has plans to build at least four "temporary sewage pools" along Suzhou Creek to reduce the amount of waste that flows into the river during rainy days, the city government announced yesterday.

The sewage pools will be the first of their kind in downtown Shanghai, according to Thursday's Shanghai Daily.

That move is a key part of the second phase of the Suzhou Creek Rehabilitation Project - an ambition that began in 1998 - which aims at rehabilitating the creek's overall watery ecology by 2010.

"The temporary pools will help reduce the pollution in Suzhou Creek by some 50 percent on rainy days," Zhu Shiqing, deputy director of the Shanghai Suzhou Creek Rehabilitation Project Head Office, said yesterday.

The first four pools will be constructed at Chengdu Road N., Mengqingyuan - a huge public park close to the Brilliant City residential area, Changping Road and Furongjiang Road respectively.

Each sewage pool is capable of storing the rainfall from a heavy shower for one hour. After the rainfall, the sewage in the pools will be channeled back to sewage plants.

Currently, there are 37 pumping stations along the creek's downtown portion, which transport sewage to different sewage plants. However, when it rains, they have to channel part of the sewage-mixed rainwater to the creek, which causes severe pollution.

One typical example happened on May 21 when Suzhou Creek was heavily polluted by the sewage-mixed rainwater for more than 11 hours, causing the river to become dark.

Pollution in Suzhou Creek can be traced back to 1910, and the stench and darkness of the creek was first found in 1920. By 1978, the entire creek was severely polluted.

After five years of work to clean up the creek, at a cost of 7 billion yuan (US$843 million), the city government announced early this year that the stench and darkness have been mostly removed from the creek.

However, the creek doesn't completely meet the government's expectations as its water quality still remains "unsteady," and many newly built high-rises along the river banks have damaged its coastal landscape.

The second phase of the project, set to run through 2005 at a cost of 4 billion yuan, comprises eight specific projects.

Among them: the further treatment of water in the 13.3-kilometer downtown portion of the creek, the treatment of its six major tributaries and the construction of "large areas" of greenland along the riverside, officials said.

(Shanghai Daily June 3, 2004)