Aid from the governments of Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia will play an important role in helping Bahrain deliver radical improvements in the kingdom’s sewage collection and treatment system, MEED’s Bahrain Energy Forum was told this morning. The conference was told that Bahrain plans to expand its sewage treatment capacity to 650,000 cubic metres a day in 2020 from 365,000 cubic metres a day in 2010 . The expansion is designed to address deficiencies in the kingdom’s existing sewage system and to support major new housing projects to be delivered in Bahrain by 2020. Assistant undersecretary in Bahrain’s Ministry of Works Khalifa Al Mansoor told the conference that plans call for the expansion of the Muharraq independent sewage treatment plant to 140,000 cubic metres a day from 100,000 cubic metres a day; doubling the capacity of the Tubli sewage treatment plant to 400,000 cubics a day and building new plants at Madinat Al Shamiliyah in the north-east of Bahrain; Seef and Madinat Janoubiyah in the south west. The Tubli plant expansion is being fiananced with development aid from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The Abu Dhabi Fund is financing the Madinat Al Shamiliyah sewage treatment plant. Other projects that are to be completed by 2020 include building deep gravity sewers and making complete use of all treated sewage treatment. Al Mansoor said that the aim is to provide connections to the sewage collection network to 100 per cent of the population in 2020. Al Mansoor said the capital cost of delivering these projects by 2020 will be BD 385m ($1,000m).