On 25 September 2026, a report from Zimbabwe's Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Environment, Climate and Wildlife, originally tabled in July 2025 and released this week, warned that only 20 of the country's 63 sewage treatment plants remain functional, with the remaining plants discharging an estimated 570 megalitres of raw sewage every day, and the committee has called on the President to declare a State of Emergency over the water and sanitation crisis by 31 December 2026 (allAfrica.com).
Key takeaways
- Zimbabwe has 20 of 63 sewage treatment plants operational, with the rest discharging roughly 570 megalitres of raw or partially treated sewage per day (allAfrica.com).
- Harare's flagship Firle plant is running at 54 megalitres per day against a 144 megalitre-per-day design, and the Crowborough plant is non-functional (allAfrica.com).
- Collapsed trunk mains at Amalinda Crossing have been releasing about 80 megalitres per day of raw sewage into the Mukuvisi River for more than 15 years (Wansom AI).
- River monitoring showed dissolved oxygen at 51.2% against a 60% healthy level and Biological Oxygen Demand at 9.48 mg/L, roughly four times the safe limit (allAfrica.com).
- The committee has asked the President to declare a State of Emergency by 31 December 2026, citing Section 73 of Zimbabwe's Constitution on the right to a safe environment (Wansom AI).
What happened: a national wastewater collapse, concentrated in Harare
The committee's report, tabled in Parliament in July 2025 and released to the public in late September 2026, was compiled after the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) invited members to inspect municipal wastewater infrastructure (Wansom AI). The report found that only 20 of Zimbabwe's 63 sewage treatment plants are currently functional, a shortfall that produces an estimated 570 megalitres of raw or inadequately treated sewage being released into the environment every day (allAfrica.com).
The findings paint a systemic picture rather than a single-site failure. "An investigation into the technical health of the region's sanitation network revealed that the infrastructure designed to convey and treat sewage has reached a critical breaking point," the report states, citing submissions from EMA, the City of Harare and Chitungwiza Municipality (allAfrica.com).
Harare's flagship plants and the Amalinda Crossing hotspot
Within the Harare Metropolitan area, the City of Harare oversees a sewer network extending more than 5,500 kilometres, supported by seven strategic pump stations at Budiriro, Avonlea, Chisipite, Fidelity, North Eastern, Marlborough and Bradfield, and seven primary treatment works with a combined design capacity of 219.5 megalitres per day (Wansom AI). Rapid population growth and aging infrastructure have left those facilities largely ineffective, and at the Firle plant only 54 megalitres per day is being processed against a 144 megalitre-per-day design, while Crowborough is completely non-functional (allAfrica.com).
Physical inspections identified Amalinda Crossing as one of the worst pollution hotspots, where trunk main pipelines have been collapsed for more than 15 years, sending approximately 80 megalitres of raw sewage each day into the Mukuvisi River, which flows downstream into Lake Chivero, the city's primary raw water source (allAfrica.com). At the Budiriro Pump Station, which has been non-functional since 2014, raw sewage continues to overflow into the Marimba River and backflow into residential yards (allAfrica.com).
Water quality and public health
River monitoring data cited in the report shows dissolved oxygen at 51.2% against a 60% healthy benchmark, Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) of 9.48 mg/L, approximately four times the safe limit, and average river turbidity of nearly 30 Nephelometric Turbidity Units (NTU), six times the 5 NTU healthy limit (allAfrica.com). Elevated phosphate levels have been linked to extensive fish deaths and the spread of water hyacinth in Lake Chivero, and the committee tied the deteriorating sanitation network to recurring outbreaks of waterborne disease, including the 2008-09 cholera outbreak, which killed approximately 4,200 people and infected 98,000 (allAfrica.com).
State of emergency call and next steps
The committee has recommended that the President declare a State of Emergency over the water and sanitation crisis by 31 December 2026, on the grounds that the current situation is inconsistent with Section 73 of the Constitution, which provides for the right to an environment that is not harmful to health or wellbeing (Wansom AI). Repairs to the Amalinda Crossing trunk mains are only expected to be completed by June 2027, according to the report (allAfrica.com).
Specification read: what this looks like for a buyer or operator
Translating the reported figures into the units a plant designer uses: the 570 megalitres per day of raw or partially treated sewage that Zimbabwe's 20 operating plants are collectively releasing equals 570,000 m³/day, and the 80 megalitres per day from Amalinda Crossing alone is 80,000 m³/day of raw discharge heading straight to a drinking-water source (allAfrica.com). The reported river BOD of 9.48 mg/L and turbidity near 30 NTU are well above typical discharge limits for surface-water protection and signal a system that is missing most stages of a conventional train: screening, grit removal, primary clarification, biological treatment (commonly A2O, MBR, MBBR, SBR or UASB depending on influent strength and land constraints), followed by tertiary polishing and disinfection, with dissolved-air flotation (DAF) used as a polishing or sludge-thickening step where solids carryover is a problem (allAfrica.com). For a buyer or operator, the recognition test is straightforward: if your plant is in the 50,000-100,000 m³/day range, is running at 30-40% of its design nameplate, is showing BOD in the 5-10 mg/L range in the receiving river above the works, and is under compliance pressure tied to a constitutional or statutory right-to-environment clause, the Harare situation is a working example of what happens when biological capacity, primary clarification and trunk-main conveyance are all out of service at once, and the procurement response tends to be parallel packages for new biological reactors, replacement of failed trunk mains, and interim chemical dosing or DAF polishing to bring downstream BOD down quickly. Process builders in this class often start with an integrated sewage treatment package sized to a defined fraction of the design flow, while municipal buyers evaluating this scale of failure also reference municipal treatment solutions and our industries we serve pages for comparable large-MLD retrofit work, and adjacent engineering buyers can compare DAF against alternative clarifiers in our DAF vs clarifier for pulp and paper wastewater in Cullman 2026 guide and DAF vs lamella clarifier for mining wastewater in Wahoo, NE 2026 buyer's guide, or review the regional cooling-blowdown context in our data center wastewater and cooling blowdown treatment in Harare, Zimbabwe 2026 engineering guide.
FAQ
What is the scale of the Harare wastewater failure in standard plant-design units?
The reported 80 megalitres per day of raw sewage discharging at Amalinda Crossing equals 80,000 m³/day, and the national 570 megalitres per day figure equals 570,000 m³/day across 20 operating plants out of 63 (allAfrica.com). For context, a single 80,000 m³/day works serving roughly 400,000-600,000 people at typical per-capita sewage flows (general industry range, not from the sources) is the kind of nameplate this hotspot represents.
Which treatment stages does this crisis implicate?
The reported BOD of 9.48 mg/L in the receiving river, turbidity near 30 NTU, and raw-sewage discharges from Amalinda Crossing and Budiriro all point to a system missing primary clarification, biological treatment and disinfection simultaneously (allAfrica.com). A typical rebuild would screen, grit and primary-clarify the influent, run a biological stage such as A2O, MBR or SBR sized to the new loading, then add tertiary polishing and disinfection before reuse or discharge.
How long until the most-cited point-source failure is fixed?
Repairs to the Amalinda Crossing trunk mains are scheduled for completion by June 2027 according to the parliamentary report (allAfrica.com). Large trunk-main replacement at this scale typically runs 12-24 months from award, including shut-down planning and tie-in work (general industry range, not from the sources).
What is the legal and procurement frame around the crisis?
The committee is asking the President to declare a State of Emergency by 31 December 2026 under Section 73 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to an environment that is not harmful to health or wellbeing (Wansom AI). For municipal and industrial buyers, that is the trigger to expect emergency-tender rules, fast-track award timelines, and parallel procurement of biological-reactor packages, trunk-main replacement, and interim DAF or chemical-dosing polishing (general industry range, not from the sources).
