By A Staff Reporter

Kathmandu, Feb. 17: Any one visiting the Pashupatinath Temple tends to put a few water drops in their mouth from the Bagmati River first thinking that the holy water purifies them.
But in reality, the water from Bagmati is neither hygienic for bathing nor for sprinkling in the mouth. The river itself looks like sewage rather than pure and pious.
Targeting the upcoming Mahashivaratri festival, clean water is being released from Guheshwori from Monday after completing the construction work of the Guheshwori Wastewater Treatment Plant, said Kamal Aryal, information officer of High Powered Committee for Integrated Development of the Bagmati Civilisation.
The plant started the testing process to purify the water of the upper side of the Bagmati River from Guheshwori about 15 days back, he said.
The sewages of Kageshwori, Manohara, Jorpari, Attarkhel, Gokarna and Bouddha areas are collected at the Guheshwori Wastewater Treatment Plant and get purified.
He said that a pump has been set to enhance the discharging level of Bagmati River. The pump started functioning from Sunday.
The purified water of the plant will be released from Tilganga area after it comes into operation. Now purified water is being released from Guheshwori targeting the upcoming Shivaratri, said Aryal. The installation capacity of the treatment plant is 32.4 million litres of sewage per day. Currently, the plant is undergoing test operation by using 24 million litres per day.
Rs. 2.56 billion was spent to construct the treatment plant. Of the total budget, Asian Development Bank has provided Rs. 1.41 billion for this plant. The government has borne the cost to design and construct the building structure.
It will generate 230 KW/hr electricity from the biogas produced from the plant and will be used in the plant. But it will take some time to start such works, informed Kathmandu Valley Wastewater Management Project.
About 7 tons of toxic sewage will be produced daily during biogas production. It can be used for the agriculture purpose.
The Kathmandu Valley Wastewater Management Project (KVWMP) of the Project Implementation Directorate (PID) has been constructing the wastewater treatment plants at Kodku of Bhaktapur, Balkumari of Lalitpur and Dhobighat.
The capacity of treatment plant to be built at Sallaghari, Kodku and Dhovighat is 14.2MLD, 17.5 MLD and 74 MLD respectively. These four plants will purify 138.1 million litres of diluted water per day.