VietNamNet Bridge – A new kind of ‘garbage’ has been discovered in HCM City: Waste oil from transformers of the HCM City Electricity Company and water plants, very dangerous to the environment, is being stored in leaky drums.

The polluted Thi Vai river

Reports presented at the workshop revealed a new kind of garbage – waste oil from transformers of the HCM City Electricity Company and water plants.

According to the Solid Waste Management of the HCM City Department for Natural Resources and the Environment, the Thu Duc Water Plant now stores 27 tonnes of oil that was used for running transformers, including three tonnes containing PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyls). Significantly, the oil is stored in leaky drums and polluting the environment.

According to power companies, every transformer requires from several hundred kilogrammes to 25 tonnes of oil to cool its engines. Meanwhile, no effective measure has been taken to manage the volume of oil.

Scientists participating in the workshop also rang the alarm bell over the pollution of the Cau, Nhue-Day and Dong Nai rivers.

The ‘culprits’ of the pollution, according to Le Dai Thang, MA, from the Environmental Department under the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment, are the enterprises that release industrial waste which contains untreated toxic substances.

There are 2,000 industrial enterprises on the Cau River, while there are 9,000 enterprises on the Dong Nai River. With such a big number of enterprises, it is very difficult to discover the enterprises that are causing the environmental pollution. It is because of the lack of environmental protection staffs. Vietnam now has 1,200 environmental management staffs, but there are only 150 staffs in charge of river valleys.

Do Quyen