About 9,000 Vietnamese die every year because of substandard water and poor sanitary conditions, and most of it appears to be caused by violations of wastewater treatment regulations, according to the Ministries of Health and Natural Resources and the Environment.
Several years ago, Vedan Vietnam, a Taiwanese seasoning powder producer, was caught red handed discharging untreated wastewater into the environment.
Through an underground sophisticated wastewater discharging system, with valves and pumps locking and opening, Vedan easily escaped the environmental police, discharging dirty water into the Thi Vai River, turning it into a dead river.
More companies violating regulations have been discovered. But unlike the seasoning powder producer, most of these were discharging directly into lakes, rivers or anywhere they could find
Environmental inspectors in June discovered Tuan Cuong Company in Van Lam District of Hung Yen Province discharging waste water into the local irrigation canal.
The company, which makes plastic beads from scrap, made commitments to the Hung Yen provincial environment department that it would use only clean materials - imports such bars, plates, pieces and blocks, or used clean water bottles, i.e., the production will not cause the wastewater to pollute the environment.
However, inspectors have found no clean import materials in the company’s storehouse. Instead, there were only used packs and scrap plastic collected from domestic sources, the quality of which was unclear.
The scraps, during the cleansing process before they were put into production, generated the wastewater, which, according to local residents, “gave a terrible smell”.
The wastewater was discharged by Tuan Cuong into the local irrigation canal, which not only seriously polluted the environment, but also damaged crops.
In Hai Duong Province, Sees Vina has also been caught discharging water directly into rice fields.
In 2012, it was fined VND216 million and forced to commit to build a waste treatment system in 2013. However, it has broken the promise.
As a result, all the fields in Van Minh Hamlet of Minh Duc Commune in Tu Ky District were affected, and agricultural crops cannot be grown in the area.
Underground water getting dirtier
According to the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment, there are some 20 million cubic meters of underground water available for exploitation nationwide, 30-40 per cent of which serves people’s daily lives.
Dr. Le Ke Son, a specialist of the ministry, said that the underground water is contaminated with microorganisms and heavy metals at alarmingly high level.
Even Hanoi has unclean water. The running water provided to the households in My Dinh residential quarter was found having the arsenic content 37 times higher than the permitted level.
In the south, the Mekong River Delta has become seriously polluted, and is now called the biggest “agriculture wastewater container” of the country. Seventy per cent of fertiliser is absorbed by plants and soil, while the other 30 per cent enters water.
