Vietnam’s new environmental law does not have enough teeth to be a deterrent against businesses discharging untreated wastewater into rivers.

After the environmental crimes of Vedan Vietnam, a producer of monosodium glutamate and animal feed, were discovered in the southern province of Dong Nai, State agencies announced they would impose heavy fines on the company. The public hoped that Vedan would be made an example which acts as a deterrent to other businesses from discharging untreated wastewater into the environment. Instead, the reverse happened: the Vedan case has been a national embarrassment, showing a sense of helplessness of the Vietnamese law over environmental criminals.

Since the Vedan case, companies have been found releasing untreated waste into the environment almost every week. They are fined only tens of millions of dong each time. It is rare that a company is forced to pay a substantial fine that would make them stop and think before they break the law next time.

Apparently, these penalties are too low compared with the benefits businesses reap by avoiding the responsibility to treat waste. It is easy to understand that the number of violations detected by environment police is on the rise. Some businesses have no respect and openly flaunt the law. A case in point is Hao Duong Company in HCM City. This company has had 23 environmental protection convictions, but still continues to discharge untreated wastewater into the river. Authorities wanted to revoke the company’s business license but inadequacies in the law meant the case finished with a petty fine of VND170 million (a bit more than US$8,700), the same amount of money that it would cost the company to treat its wastewater for 10 days.

After the Vedan case, the Government amended the decree on administrative punishment for environmental violations. Decree No. 117 is considered stronger with the maximum fine going up to VND500 million, or over US$25,600. However, a lot of the regulations are weaker than the old decree.

First, the new decree still limits the maximum fine to not more than VND500 million regardless of the scale of environmental damage. In a case of discharging wastewater at 5,000-10,000 cubic meters per day, the new maximum fine is nothing compared with the cost for treating that volume of wastewater.

Second, Decree 117 is more lenient in cases where the business license can be temporarily revoked. To be able to revoke a license the authorities must prove that the offending business has released a minimum 10,000 cubic meters of wastewater that has pollutants exceeding legal limits by 5-10 times the standard on at least 10 occasions. It’s softer than the old version which stipulated only five occasions.

The new decree is also very vague about how it requires businesses to fix the problem and it does not have any clauses on how to deal repeated violations.

It is obvious that the laws to punish environmental criminals remain too weak to be a deterrent. Despite the environmental costs some businesses will continue discharging wastewater into the environment because it is cheaper to pay the fines than pay for waste treatment.

The Government should amend regulations to tip the financial scales in favor of the environment. For instance, instead of fixing the maximum fine, why not remove the limits so fines could be double or triple the cost of waste treatment from the date of the last inspection to the day the discharge is discovered. It also makes sense that triple offenders should have their license revoked permanently.

Polluters will not start playing by the rules until the authorities can bite back with bigger fines and heftier penalties.

Source: SGT