The southern province of Long An is fast becoming a barren land because its most precious resource has been over exploited for building industrial parks.

Ben Luc Industrial Park in southern Long An Province. The province now has 20 industrial parks with a combined area of more than 7,600 ha in addition to dozens of industrial clusters, most of which are under construction.

To meet this demand, many enterprises have begun a service to provide soil for construction works. This has led to the loss of tonnes of topsoil that robs the land of fertility, virtually forever.

Many fields in the province are now huge water cellars.

The owner of an enterprise involved the new business said that he could earn billions of dong from selling the soil exploited from a one hectare area for builders of the local IPs.

The rapid development of many IPs in the province has created a serious shortage of soil for levelling construction sites, according to Nguyen Van Thiep, director of the Long An Natural Resources and Environment Department (NRED).

To meet this demand, provincial authorities have allowed some enterprises to exploit land in some areas including the districts of Ben Luc, Duc Hoa and Thanh Hoa, Thiep said.

He said the provincial administration has stipulated that areas planned for land exploitation must be of low economic efficiency.

The enterprises involved are allowed only to exploit a few dozen hectares of land in each of these three districts, with a maximum depth of 8 meters, in line with the current laws on minerals exploitation, he said.

Rules flouted

However, many enterprises, after receiving licences, did not bother to obey the regulations and exploited the land well beyond permitted levels, Thiep admitted.

In Ben Luc District’s Luong Hoa Commune, for instance, just 50 hectares of land has been zoned by local authorities for digging up the soil to supply the IPs. However double this area has been exploited at an average depth of more than 13 meters.

Mai Phuong, Hoang Long and Nam Phong companies are among those digging up land in Luong Hoa.

A similar situation can be seen at nearby communes including Luong Binh and Loc Giang, where land has been dug up in hundreds of laces at an average depth of over 10 meters, leaving craters behind.

Land of the dead

Ut Chien, a farmer in Luong Hoa Commune, said that the areas that are being dug up used to be sugarcane plantations in the past.

After being licensed to exploit the land there, enterprises paid local farming households between VND500 and 800 million per hectare of land, Chien said.

“After digging it for a depth of between 13 and 15 meters, the areas have turned into the land of the dead, with deep water pits,” he said.

A section of the commune’s main road has sunk into a huge pit dug by the

Hoang Long Company, he said.

“My house now is in danger of being collapsed by a big pit being dug also by the Hoang Long Company,” said Huynh Thi Nhung, another Luong Hoa farmer.

A commune-level cadre of the Loc Giang People’s Committee said the dug areas were the commune’s arable land, but they have become deep holes.

“Many local farmers have tried to raise fish in these pits but they failed because water there is too cold because of the depth,” he said.

He also said that at least three people have died so far after falling into these water holes.

Big trucks transporting soil from the areas throughout the day and night have also heavily damaged local roads and caused serious environment pollution, the cadre said.

Thiep of the Natural Resources and Environment Department also said that vehicles carrying soil for construction works were mainly responsible for the damage suffered by may roads in the province.

Slap on the wrist

Thiep said his agency has already punished many violators for overexploitation of land.

In the first nine months of this year, the department collected a total VND1.7 billion (US$92,391) from the violators. However, the latter continued to violate the regulations, because the current penalty was too small compared to the profit they earn from selling soil, he said.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News