M A N D A L AY U R B A N S E R V I C E S I M P R O V E M E N T P R O J E C T
TOWARD A GREEN MANDALAY
The City of Mandalay has grown around the moat of the old royal palace
Emerging from decades of isolation, Myanmar is
experiencing rapid economic growth. Economic sanctions
imposed by many countries in the late 1980s clearly
hampered development. In Mandalay, the country’s
second largest city, chronic underinvestment has left urban
services such as water supply, drainage, and sanitation in a
poor state.
This is all about to change as the Mandalay City
Government prepares to embark on its first major urban
investment program in 25 years. The Mandalay Urban
Services Improvement Project will substantially improve the
environment and public health conditions toward the vision
of creating a clean and prosperous green city by 2040. The
Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the French Agency for
Development (AFD) will provide financing for the project.
Geographically, Mandalay sits in the middle of a large plain
bordered in the west by the Ayeyarwady River, the largest
river in Myanmar. Mandalay is the last royal capital and
center of Myanmar culture and Buddhism. The city took its
name from Mandalay Hill, the tranquil green heart of the
city known for its many pagodas and monasteries.
Below the hill, however, the city is shrouded in construction
dust of a development boom. The current population of
1.25 million is expected to double in the next 25 years.
The existing water supply system of Mandalay was built
with an ADB loan in the 1990s before international
economic sanctions were imposed. The main pumping
station still functions but the current system covers only
part of the city core, providing an intermittent, untreated
water supply to about half of the city’s residents.
Says U Tun Kyi, a leading member of the Mandalay City
Development Committee:
“The City of Mandalay and ADB share a similar
concept of green cities. ADB is providing technical
assistance to prepare our project. First we will
upgrade the water supply system. In the future we
will expand coverage to the unserved areas.” 1
The project will rehabilitate the existing water supply
system, increase water production, and reduce nonrevenue
water (NRW), which now accounts for about 50% of the
water supply. City water and sanitation department staff
are already undergoing training on NRW management
techniques by experts from VEI, a Dutch water company,
and the project preparation team.
Social surveys by the project preparation team indicate that
there is a high demand for new water connections, especially
in the poor peri-urban communities surrounding the city
core, due to the lack of other suitable water sources.
Wastewater treatment is another major project
component. The lakes and drainage canals that crisscross
1 ADB TA-8472 MYA; project preparation consultants: PM Group/Safege
Selling vegetables by the polluted Thingaza Creek, which will be cleaned up by the project
the city, like Thingaza Creek, are severely polluted by
domestic and industrial waste and choked with garbage.
The project preparation team found high levels of
biological oxygen demand, or BOD, and trace amounts of
toxic metals in the canal network. There is no wastewater
treatment other than household septic tanks, which often
leak and pollute water bodies.
Says U Tun Kyi:
According to Gary Moys, the project preparation team leader:
The intricate canal system serves as the drainage network
for storm water during the rainy season. The project team
modeled existing and future hydrological conditions,
including the impact of climate change, to assess
different options to improve drainage. The project will
dredge canals and drains, remove hydraulic bottlenecks,
and implement nonstructural measures to manage the
drainage network.
“There is a clear relationship between poor
environmental services and public health.
Mandalay is setting itself to become a green city,
but a fundamental aspect of that is to have good
environmental services that will attract not only
tourism but also will attract industry and others to
the city of Mandalay.”
The city’s first wastewater treatment facility will be built to
clean up Thingaza Creek. This will have a beneficial impact
on the health and quality of life of the people living near
the canal.
A significant source of pollution of the canals is untreated
wastewater from factories in the industrial zone in the
southern part of the city. The government has contracted
a private company to build and operate a wastewater
treatment facility for industrial effluent.
“The city has to install a sewerage system.
Wastewater must be treated before it is discharged.
Drainage is also a problem. We need to establish an
effective urban drainage system.”
Measures to improve solid waste management will also be
given attention, according to Moys:
“The city is actually doing quite a good job with
regard to solid waste collection and disposal, but
there are key things that need to be improved to
expand the service and help reduce the amount of
solid waste that finds its way into the drains.”
Campaigns to create environmental awareness among city
residents will be a key measure to reduce the amount of
trash dumped into water bodies. The project cannot deliver
sustainable improvements to the urban environment
Mandalay’s water service now provides an intermittent supply to about half the city residents
without community participation. Residents have a crucial
role to play in creating a green Mandalay.
In a later phase of the project, a sanitary landfill will be
constructed to replace the environmentally hazardous
northern and southern dumpsites, where leachate from
trash pollutes the groundwater and waste pickers toil in
unsafe, unhealthy conditions.
An important consideration for both the government and
ADB is the financial sustainability of the project, according
to Eri Honda, Principal Urban Specialist with ADB’s
Southeast Asia Department:
“The City of Mandalay will have to raise sufficient
revenue to cover operation and maintenance
costs, as well as part of the capital cost of the new
infrastructure. The can be achieved by gradually
increasing the tariff for water supply, wastewater
treatment, and garbage collection. The community
surveys reveal that people are willing to pay for
improved urban services. Financial sustainability is
crucial to the development of a green Mandalay that
will benefit all city residents.”
The Mandalay Urban Services Improvement Project
has been approved by the Mandalay City Development
Committee, which will implement the project. It is now
going through the approval process by regional and
national government.
MANDALAY URBAN SERVICES
IMPROVEMENT PROJECT
Main Outputs:
• Rehabilitation and extension of water supply system
• Nonrevenue water reduction
• Wastewater collection and treatment phase 1
• Sludge treatment/disposal and gas to energy
• Septage management
• Nonstructural storm water management
• Dredging drainage canals and increasing flow
• Improved urban planning, integrating climate
change resilience
• Utility capacity building and corporatization
• Public awareness raising
Financing:
• $130 million project
• $60 million loan from ADB and €40 million from AFD
• Balance funded by government and grants
CONTACTS
Eri Honda
ehonda@adb.org
Denis Desille
desilled@afd.fr
Khin May Htay
khinmayhtay62@gmail.com
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO license (CC BY 3.0 IGO)
© 2015 ADB. The CC license does not apply to non-ADB copyright materials in this publication.
Publication Stock No. ARM157556-2