Environment authorities in Dong Nai Province, 35 kilometers outside of HCM City, on Monday referred a repeat offender to central agencies to impose stronger penalties.

The tanker sent by the Tan Phat Tai Private Company to dump waste around Dong Nai Province.

In nearby Binh Duong Province, meanwhile, residents are stressed over several streams dying of industrial pollution.

In Dong Nai, the Tan Phat Tai Private Company in Bien Hoa Town, not far from HCMC, was last year caught twice by Dong Nai police discharging harmful waste including paint and oil into the land of nearby residents. The company was fined VND15 million (US$842).

Again on June 12 this year, the footwear company was caught releasing waste into a residential plot in Long Thanh District. It was fined VND10 million on July 3 only to be caught dumping around three cubic meters of wastewater from a tanker in Vinh Cuu District just four days later.

Since the company’s license for transporting, treating and destroying waste was granted by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, authorities in Dong Nai said they can only impose cash penalties upon the polluter.

Vo Van Chanh, deputy director of the province’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment, said the department has suggested the ministry further investigate the company in order to impose stronger punishment.

“The wastewater is black and smells like weed killer,” a local resident had said in July, adding that she could hardly breathe when standing near the dumping site.

Test results later showed that the effluent contained cyanide, phenol, lead and other heavy metals.

Le Quang Thang, who drove the tanker that dumped the waste, said he had been doing so for two months, getting paid VND2 million for each trip. Thang said he was told where to throw the waste, and that he made three such trips a day.

Dying streams and rivers

In related news, residents in Binh Duong Province, another industrial hub in the south, have complained about more firms polluting the Thi Tinh River.

The river had been found severely polluted by pig breeder San Miguel Pure Foods Limited last month, but locals said the company had been doing it for a long time, along with many other firms.

Resident Truong Van Long said locals had stopped using water from a river tributary, the Ben Van Stream – from 2000, when the Dai Viet pig breeding company started operations in Lai Hung Commune, Ben Cat District.

Long’s neighbor Nguyen Xuan Tinh said “No one dares to cross the stream because it will be very itchy.”

Waste including pig feces leaked from the company’s reservoir into the stream, which turns black every time the discharge is in process, Saigon Tiep Thi newspaper cited Tinh as saying Monday.

Dai Viet has already been fined more than VND53 million in January for discharging harmful effluents.

Vuong Van Phuoc, vice chairman of Lai Uyen Commune in the district, said many other pig breeding, paper and rubber companies in the area are killing the Thi Tinh River by polluting its tributaries.

“They don’t have proper wastewater treatment systems and some companies have already been caught in the act of dumping and fined several times,” Phuoc added.

Mai Ba Hung, a local fish farmer said the quality of the river water had steadily worsened over the past five years.

“No one is so stupid to use the water for washing or cleaning any more,” Hung said.

Another fish farmer, Truong Van Su, said he has been jobless since the San Miguel wastewater reservoir broke two weeks ago, discharging hundreds of thousands of tons of contaminated material into the Thi Tinh River.

“I am not looking forward to compensation,” Su said. “I just want the river to be clean again.”

He said local fishermen used to catch 20-30 kilos of fish a day each but these days they can only manage to find four or five kilos.

The Thi Tinh River is a tributary of the Saigon River which supplies water for millions of people in Ho Chi Minh City.

VietNamNet/Thanh Nien/SGTT