Ho Chi Minh City Environmental Protection Agency in a fresh inspection has found over 50% of enterprises located along the Saigon River have no wastewater facilities.
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| Saigon River |
This new inspection is the next stage of a probe into polluters along the river after the first stage ending last month that also revealed a similar proportion of violators.
The agency made the disheartening discovery after completing a survey at 300 industrial enterprises along the river basin, said an official of the agency.
Nguyen Cuu Long Giang, chief of the agency’s supervision division, told the Daily on Thursday that after carrying out a one-month survey, over 50% of the companies were found to have no wastewater facilities and that means the embattled Saigon river will have even worse pollution.
The enterprises that do have the facilities are still negligent because the quality of their treated wastewater was still violating permitted levels.
Late last month, after carrying out a four-month survey at 450 industrial enterprises along the river, the agency had also discovered that 270 out of 450 investigated enterprises had no wastewater facilities.
Last month’s investigation showed that the 450 enterprises were discharging into the river some 61,000 cubic metres of industrial wastewater every day, 2,200 cubic metres discharged from cattle-breeding farms and over 100,000 cubic metres of household wastewater.
The industries that had the largest amount of discharge were clothing and textile, foodstuff production and chemical production.
The Department of Natural Resources and Environment and other related agencies are trying to think up a master plan to save the Saigon River.
The Saigon–Dong Nai river system supplies huge amounts of crude water source for the operation of key water plants in the city such as Tan Hiep and Thu Duc water plants.
In another development, the people’s committee of Binh Duong has just issued a ‘black list’ of 50 enterprises causing serious environmental pollution, said Nguyen Trinh Cao Son, vice head of Binh Duong Environment Protection Agency.
Son told the Daily on Thursday that the province government also ordered these 50 enterprises to carry out measures to repair the pollution by the end of July.
