Policy Interpretatio
2026-10-20Introduction: The Chongqing Municipal Housing and Urban-Rural Development Commission recently issued the "Chongqing Municipality '15th Five-Year Plan' Urban Domestic Sewage Treatment and Urban Drainage and Waterlogging Prevention Plan (2026–2030年)", defining five binding indicators and three anticipated indicators. During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the plan calls for the construction and renovation of more than 4500 kilometers of urban sewage pipelines; by 2030年, the coverage rate of sensing devices at key nodes of the municipal sewage pipeline network in the central urban area will reach 100%, and pilot programs for reclaimed water allocation will be promoted in districts and counties such as Bishan and Rongchang.
Five Binding Indicators: Turning the "Invisible Pipeline Network" into Hard Targets
The most noteworthy aspect of this plan is that it has converted indicators that long remained at the advocacy level into figures with assessment-binding force.
- Collection rate — by 2027年, the citywide centralized collection rate of urban domestic sewage shall reach 87%, the central urban area shall reach 90%, and 2030年 shall stably maintain above this level;
- Compliance rate — the compliance rate of domestic sewage treatment shall reach 100% in cities and basically reach 100% in townships;
- Sludge disposal — the harmless disposal rate of sludge shall reach 100% in cities and 90% in townships;
- Sponge city — by 2030年, the proportion of built-up area meeting sponge city standards shall reach 80%;
- Sensing coverage — by 2030年, the coverage rate of sensing devices at key nodes of the municipal sewage pipeline network in the central urban area shall reach 100%.
Among these, the two indicators of "collection rate" and "sensing coverage rate" are key signals for judging the shift in local water governance approaches. The former means the governance focus is shifting from "plant construction and capacity expansion" to "getting the pipeline network to collect the inflow," while the latter means the regulatory approach is shifting from "looking at water quality at the end" to "looking at data across the whole process." For equipment and system suppliers, these two indicators directly correspond to two types of orders: pipeline network inspection and repair and online monitoring and sensing.
The Pipeline Network Is the Top Priority: Where the 4500 Kilometers of Engineering Volume Comes From
The plan explicitly lists pipeline network construction as the "top priority." The specific scope during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period is: more than 1000 kilometers of new urban sewage pipelines, more than 2100 kilometers of renovated pipelines, and more than 1400 kilometers of newly built and renovated township sewage pipelines; at the same time, more than 800 kilometers of new urban stormwater pipelines and more than 1200 kilometers of renovated pipelines.
Adding the two sets of figures for sewage and stormwater together, the planned total for pipeline networks alone exceeds 6500 kilometers. The plan also requires strict implementation of separate stormwater and sewage systems, tackling the pipeline network shortcomings in old urban areas and urban villages, and continuously advancing "one point, one policy" and "one outfall, one policy" overflow pollution remediation to consolidate the results of urban black and odorous water body treatment.
There is a technical detail here that is easily overlooked: the renovation volume (2100 kilometers) is more than twice the new construction volume (1000 kilometers). This indicates that the main body of Chongqing's pipeline network work is not "spreading the pancake" style expansion, but rather the diagnosis and repair of existing pipeline networks. Pipeline networks in old urban areas and urban villages often have composite defects such as wrong connections, mixed connections, damage, and siltation, corresponding to technical needs in CCTV inspection, flow monitoring, trenchless repair, and wrong/mixed connection rectification — this is an entirely different industrial chain from new pipeline network construction.
Digital and Intelligent Empowerment: From "Separation of Plants and Networks" to the Full Chain of "Source–Network–Plant–River"
The plan proposes building a new model of full-chain smart management and control covering "source–network–plant–river," and explicitly calls for creating an urban waterlogging prevention AI agent with intelligent analysis and decision-support capabilities, achieving a closed loop of "early warning before rain, monitoring during rain, and assessment after rain."
This formulation goes a step further than what is generally meant by a "smart water platform." Traditional smart water management mostly remains at the assembly stage of "in-plant automatic control + pipeline network GIS + large-screen display," with data not interconnected across systems; whereas "source–network–plant–river" requires truly linking the data of the four segments — drainage source households, transmission pipeline networks, treatment plants, and receiving water bodies — into a single chain, with the role of the AI agent being to make predictions and scheduling decisions along this chain, not merely visualization.
On the procurement side, this means demand will shift from "buying equipment" to "buying systems that deliver outcomes": before rain, overflow risk prediction coupled with rainfall forecasts and pipe network liquid levels is needed; during rain, coordinated scheduling of pumping stations and storage facilities is needed; after rain, quantitative assessment of overflow pollution impacts is needed. Suppliers that can only provide single-point instruments will find it difficult to enter such tenders; only those capable of delivering a combined "sensing equipment + models + scheduling strategies" package will have bargaining room.
Reclaimed Water: From "Pilot Allocation" to "Multi-Scenario Utilization"
The plan explicitly proposes advancing reclaimed water allocation pilots in districts and counties such as Bishan and Rongchang, using treated reclaimed water for industrial production, municipal greening, road spraying, ecological water replenishment and other fields, to achieve circular utilization of water resources.
Chongqing's choice has its geographical logic. As an important city on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, Chongqing sits by a great river yet belongs to areas with engineering-related water scarcity—water is abundant but cannot be retained or diverted, and the undulating terrain leads to high water supply costs. Under such conditions, the value of reclaimed water lies not only in "saving water" but also in being locally accessible, stable in volume, and unaffected by dry seasons. For industrial parks, reclaimed water is a deterministic water source that can be written into production plans; for municipalities, it is a low-cost miscellaneous water that can replace tap water.
It is worth noting that the plan places reclaimed water in the "sewage treatment" chapter rather than the "water conservation" chapter. This arrangement itself indicates that reclaimed water is regarded as the output end of the sewage system, rather than a supplementary item of the water supply system. This shift in perspective determines that reclaimed water pipe networks must be planned and constructed in sync with sewage pipe networks; otherwise, the common dilemma of "the plant is built but the water cannot be delivered" will arise.
Institutional Safeguards: Regulations, Plant-Network Integration and Payment by Performance
The plan sets out three institutional arrangements, all pointing to the reconstruction of "responsibility and payment mechanisms":
- Introduce local regulations—formulate the Chongqing Municipal Urban Drainage and Sewage Treatment Regulations, elevating planning requirements into legal constraints;
- Promote "plant-network integration" operation and maintenance—break the old pattern in which sewage treatment plants and pipe networks belong to different entities and are assessed in isolation, making the same entity responsible for the entire process of "collection—treatment—discharge";
- Implement payment by performance—link assessment and settlement to governance outcomes rather than to construction volume.
The combination of "plant-network integration + payment by performance" is the most important institutional change in the domestic drainage industry in recent years. It changes the long-standing incentive misalignment in the industry: in the past, plants only managed effluent compliance, while pipe network leakage and misconnections led to insufficient inflow and low concentrations at the plant, and the plant operator actually "saved electricity"; after plant-network integration, collection rate and influent concentration become assessment indicators for the same entity, and pipe network repair gains endogenous economic motivation. For operation service providers, this is both an opportunity (larger tenders, longer terms) and a threshold (must possess pipe network operation and maintenance capabilities).
Conclusion
The value of Chongqing's plan lies not in how large the numbers are, but in the fact that it turns "pipe networks" and "data"—the two things hardest to assess in the past—into binding indicators. 4500 km of newly built and reconstructed pipe networks, 100% sensing coverage, plant-network integration and payment by performance—the four items point in the same direction: the competitive focus of the drainage industry is shifting from "who can build plants" to "who can collect the water, explain the data clearly, and take responsibility for the outcomes." For water utilities laying out in the Southwest market, this is a capability checklist that needs to be compared item by item.
About TIANYI TECH: TIANYI LIMITED focuses on the fields of sewage treatment, reclaimed water reuse and water environment governance, providing municipal and industrial clients with full-chain services including process design, equipment integration, engineering general contracting and smart operation. The company continuously tracks global water treatment policies, technologies and market dynamics, and is committed to helping customers achieve efficient utilization and sustainable management of water resources with reliable solutions. For more information, please visit the company website www.tianyitech.hk.
Source: China Construction News Network, "Chongqing Releases the '15th Five-Year Plan' Urban Domestic Sewage Treatment and Urban Drainage and Waterlogging Prevention Plan" (2026年10月12日), based on the Chongqing Municipal "15th Five-Year Plan" Urban Domestic Sewage Treatment and Urban Drainage and Waterlogging Prevention Plan (2026—2030年) issued by the Chongqing Municipal Housing and Urban-Rural Development Commission.
