Extreme pollution near Le Minh Xuan Industrial Zone in Ho Chi Minh City.

All industrial zones in Dong Nai should have a central wastewater treatment plant by the end of this year or face suspension, a provincial official said Sunday.

The promise of tough action against environmental offences came as provincial authorities drew criticism for letting a Taiwanese firm, Vedan Vietnam, pollute a river right under their noses for more than a decade.

Sunday’s meeting also saw department officials from four southern provinces and Ho Chi MInh City respond to the public outcry by pledging to crack down on river polluters.

The “Talk and Act” program is organized by the HCMC People’s Council and HCMC Television.

Last month, a team of environment inspectors from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MNRE) had caught monosodium glutamate (MSG)-maker Vedan Vietnam in the act of dumping untreated wastewater into the Thi Vai River in southern Dong Nai Province.

The ministry had said that the company had been discharging huge amounts of untreated wastewater each month since it began operations in 1994. The company had pipes hidden below the water surface to avoid police detection.

The firm is facing criminal charges and stiff fines for its actions.

A recent ministry report said that rapid industrialization over the past decade had caused serious pollution of a 10-kilometer section of the Thi Vai River, making it totally “dead.”

Het told the conference Sunday that it was “extremely difficult” to clean up the Thi Vai, but that the province would “try hard” to do so.

Many deputies of the People’s Council at the meeting weren’t satisfied with Het’s answer.

Deputy Truong Trong Nghia said the Dong Nai environment authorities should make it clear who was ultimately to blame in the Vedan case.

Deputy Dang Van Khoa agreed. “In the Vedan case, it’s the local environmental management authorities that the public have denounced the most,” he said.

Khoa questioned whether any local government agency or official had been found involved in abetting Vedan.

Het said his department would have to wait for final results from the investigation team.

From Dong Nai to HCMC

Officials from HCMC and other provinces also expressed concern over the pollution of many other rivers in the south.

The HCMC People’s Council’s chairperson Pham Phuong Thao blamed the pollution of the Thi Vai River and canals like Ba Bo and Thay Cai-An Ha on the lack of coordination among concerned local authorities.

Deputy Khoa said low fines imposed on polluters were also partly to blame. Khoa urged the HCMC Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DNRE) to take sterner measures against polluters than just imposing several million dong in fines.

The department’s director Dao Anh Kiet promised local residents some good news on improving the environment by the end of this year.

Kiet said his department was also asking the municipal People’s Committee to allow inspectors to conduct surprise checks on suspected polluters.

The director of Long An Province’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment. Nguyen Van Thiep, urged the ministry to develop plans to coordinate local environment protection activities and install monitoring stations along rivers to detect polluters.

For his part, the director of Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province’s DNRE, Dang Nhu Hien, admitted some responsibility for the pollution in the province in the past years.

Hien said Ba Ria-Vung Tau might have spent too much attention on economic growth and neglected the environment.

“At the moment, Ba Ria-Vung Tau only accepts environment-friendly investors,” Hien said.

Vice director of the Binh Duong Province’s DNRE, Vo Thi Ngoc Hanh, said her province had also instructed factories in the two Song Than industrial zones that have been found polluting the Ba Bo canal to connect their wastewater treatment plants to a central one.

Hanh said Binh Duong would ensure all its industrial zones discharge wastewater properly by next February at the latest.

Director of the HCMC Flood Prevention Center Nguyen Phuoc Thao said that the center will start cleaning and reinforcing banks along the Ba Bo canal to assuage pollution fears of local residents.

Reported by Minh Nam