Most South African wastewater treatment plants are struggling to meet discharge standards. Poor maintenance resulting in dilapidated infrastructure, unskilled personnel and overloaded treatment plants resulting from untimely upgrades have been cited as the main reasons behind noncompliance. This results in water resource contamination which is problematic for a country that only receives an average of 460 mm annually. The contamination of the catchment in this way further results in increased treatment costs for downstream potable water treatment. Unavailability of structured funding into the sector is one of the key cause behind non-compliance. Understanding the actual comprehensive cost of wastewater treatment (which includes biosolids management amongst others) can be used in developing suitable business and cost models for adoption by the wastewater treatment sector. This project aims to develop a wastewater costing model (from fundamental treatment principles) which can be used as a decision making tool for wastewater management. The model will take into account plant location, plant size, treatment technology and actual costs. It will further assist with easy estimation of wastewater treatment costs per volume without going through design. The ultimate outputs will be a guide to wastewater costing and a costing model which will be presented to various stakeholders and be used for decision making.