Environment
Ministries vow to tighten control over industrial waste water
  • | Vietnamnet | October 05, 2012 02:04 PM

A lot of solutions to the industrial waste water management have been suggested, but the hazardous waste still has been discharged directly into the environment.

 

 Ministries vow to tighten control over industrial waste water

Local newspapers have reported that the local residents living around the Thuong Tin industrial zone in Dien Nam Dong commune of Dien Ban district in the central province of Quang Nam have shown their strong protest against the operation of the Vietnam-France steel mill in the locality, believing that it is the culprit causing the serious environment pollution.

Since the company ignored the request by the local authorities to halt operation for a certain period to fix the emission, noise and dust problems, on September 30, hundreds of local residents surrounded the mill, preventing all vehicles from entering or going out from the industrial zone.

Some months ago, local newspapers reported a series of case, where local residents showed their protest against the industrial production factories by gathering in front of the head offices of the companies, requesting to halt production to make compensation for people.

The problem lies in the fact that the waste water of the factories has been discharged directly to the environment, without any preliminary treatment, because the enterprises do not have waste water treatment plants, or have too old machines.

There are 17 concentrated waste water treatment plants in urban areas nationwide which have the total capacity of 565,000 cubic metres per day, according to Dai Doan Ket newspaper. These include big plants namely Binh Hung in HCM City (141,000 cubic metres per day), Yen So Plant in Hanoi (200,000 cubic metres). It is expected that 30 more waste water treatment plants in urban areas would be built by 2020.

Reports showed that 118 concentrated waste water treatment plants with the total capacity of 431,510 cubic metres per day have existed in 66 percent of the operational industrial zones.

The noteworthy thing here is that the plants have been mostly funded by foreign sources. Meanwhile, no institutional or individual investor has made investment in the field so far, because the current regulations do not offer the preferences high enough to encourage investors to pour their money into the environment protection projects.

Deputy Minister of Construction Cao Lai Quang has noted that the Decree 88 has exposed a lot of shortcomings in the management over the waste water treatment, and that it needs a replacement.

Nguyen Hong Tien, a senior official of the Ministry of Construction said it’s necessary to offer more incentives to encourage institutions and individuals to inject money in waste water treatment projects. The incentives could be the exemption from the land leasing fee; the state’s 100 percent pay for site clearance. Especially, the state should promise to support the investors to build technical infrastructure works outside the project areas.

Dr Nguyen Viet Anh, Deputy Head of the Environment Science and Technology Institute under the Civil Engineering University, has also pointed out that industrial zones lack waste water treatment plants partially because of the unreasonable policies.

Since enterprises cannot enjoy preferences, they would prioritize to use money for upgrading products and boosting sales instead of spending money on waste water treatment plants.

Meanwhile, Anh said industrial zone developers find it hard to access reasonable capital sources to build new plants or expand the operational plants.

Analysts have agreed that if only relying on the rubbish treatment fees collected from enterprises, the industrial zone developers would not have money to cover the expenses on the building and development of the waste water treatment plants in their industrial zones.

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