The rainy season in the capital city usually starts in August and lasts until the end of October.
Nguyen Luong Ngoc, director of the Hanoi Water Drainage Company’s design team said the capital could only afford to improve drainage systems in the downtown areas, including Hoan Kiem, Dong Da, Ba Dinh and Hai Ba Trung districts.
Priority will be put first on making sure the To Lich River basin could be drained properly, said Do Anh Tuan, deputy director of Hanoi drainage project management.
Tuan said efforts to improve the drainage capacity around the Nhue River and in the city’s outskirts would only be undertaken if authorities could come up with more money in the future.
A Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) plan approved in 1995 aimed to first improve the drainage capacity of the Nhue and To Lich rivers.
The first phase of the project, implemented between 1998-2005, dredged major channels and lakes while the second phase would build storm drains running from residential areas to those waterways and reservoirs, Tuan said.
He added that VND2.7 trillion (US$151.5 million) had been spent in the first phase, during which the Yen So station was built.
The second phase from 2008 to 2013 is expected to invest more than VND6.3 trillion to raise the capacity of Yen So station.
Tuan said the biggest problem hindering phase two of the project was the relocation of thousands of families.
The project management has not allocated resettlement areas for 667 displaced families in need of homes while 1,557 of the affected families have still refused to hand over their land.
Given the city’s poor drainage system, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s Irrigation Planning Institute said the Yen So station’s capacity must be nearly quadrupled to prevent flooding in downtown.
At the end of October last year, torrential downpours sparked the worst flooding the capital had seen in more than two decades. The floods put many streets under two meters of water and blackouts swept the city. Thousands of hectares of crops on the city’s outskirts were also destroyed.
The Hanoi Water Drainage Company said the city drainage system was only equipped to handle 85mm of rainfall while it received 300mm on the first day of flooding.
P.V