Water sourcing location will be moved to the upstream of Saigon River
Vice-Chairman of HCM City People's Committee Le Hoa Binh has approved the city plan for water supply system during the 2020-2025 period and the clean water supply and the clean water supply and end of groundwater extraction programme during the 2020-2030 period.
According to the HCM City People's Committee, the current water sources of the Saigon and Dong Nai rivers, are being polluted while facing saline intrusion. The water companies have to deal with pollution from other city and provincial authorities along those rivers to have a good quality water.
The city authorities planned to move the water sourcing locations to the upstream of Saigon and Dong Nai rivers. In the future, the water companies will take water from Dau Tieng and Tri An reservoirs.
The city will also move the location for water sourcing in Cu Chi District 15-20km to the upstream which will be 10-15km away from the Thi Tinh and Saigon rivers. Wells will be covered up and plants will be asked to stop exploiting underground water so that by 2025, HCM City will only exploit a total of 100,000 cubic metres of water a day.
HCM City will build two water plants in the eastern and western areas of the city. One of them will be located in Thu Duc City with a capacity of 500,000 cubic metres a day. It is expected to be opened in 2040. The other one will be located in Hoc Mon District or Binh Chanh District with a capacity of two million cubic metres a day. It is expected to be put into operation in 2050.
The city is researching and considering building a series of reservoirs.
94% of the water come from Dong Nai and Saigon rivers with the remainder from underground water sources. However, there are many shortcomings and problems such as the lack of a quality management system on the pipeline. The water plants provide over 1.9 million cubic metres of water a day to the city in 2019 and 2.4 million cubic metres of water in 2020.
The goal is to increase the total capacity to 2.9 million cubic metres a day. The city will pilot public drinking tap water at several locations.