The change of color of Red River’s water in the section through Lao Cai and Yen Bai provinces doesn’t affect its quality, confirmed Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Nguyen Thai Lai.

Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Nguyen Thai Lai.

Earlier, people who live along the Red River, the section through Yen Bai province saw the water change color. The section running through Lao Cai province also had a strange color.

The Yen Bai province Natural Resources and Environment Department had taken samples of the Red River for testing and advised locals to limit their direct use of the river water.

The moves were made following a report from the local environmental police warning that the river water is tainted with harmful chemicals.

The Yen Bai Environmental Police Department reported that the content of lead (Pb) and cadmium (Cd) in the river water had exceeded limits by 7.4 times and 5.15 times respectively.

Water samples for testing was taken from the river section that flows into Yen Bai and from some other locations within the province to identify the origin and the scope of the pollution.

The department asked local authorities to warn residents about the pollution and advise them to constrain their use of water from the river.

The Red River section in the northern province is 94 km long, running through Yen Bai City and two districts: Van Yen and Tran Yen.

After that the General Department of Environment conducted another test, which yielded a different result. According to the test, the water is still safe for irrigation.

Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Nguyen Thai Lai said that the difference between the two tests because of many reasons.

Firstly, the river is very long and it is connected with other rivers at some sections so the quality of water may be different at different sections.

Secondly, the water flow moves constantly so the samples are different at different times, even though the samples are collected at the same site.

According to environment police, they didn’t find any sources of polluted water discharging to the river from Lao Cai, Yen Bai or other provinces. The question is whether the polluted water came from foreign sources.

There is no agreement on management, exploitation and protection of the Red River between Vietnam and China.

Vietnam has asked for China’s cooperation several times to control and protect the Red River together. So far, China has just promised to supply data on the quality of Red River’s water in the rainy season to Vietnam.

Vietnam has not installed automatic observing stations in the river yet.

PV