HCM City has vowed to upgrade the quality of the water of the Dong Nai River, which is the source of water for nearly 20 million local residents. Many water treatment plants will be built to implement the project.


Cao Tung Son, a senior official at the HCM City Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, said the problem of Dong Nai requires comprehensive measures.

Son said his department inspected 310 units in the locality, and suspended 100 units found as seriously polluting the environment. Thirty-seven enterprises subject to compulsory relocation have received necessary support from the city’s authorities to move to other places.

Many environmental protection funds have been established with an aim to provide financial support to projects to reduce pollution. The fund for minimizing pollution in industrial and handicraft production, for example, offers loans with the interest rate of zero percent to help enterprises settle their problems.

To date, enterprises have stopped their operations and completed the pollution settlement, while all the 15 industrial zones and export processing zones have put concentrated waste water treatment systems into use.

The environment department has also paid special attention to projects on upgrading canals where waste water flows to the Dong Nai River. The city has spent money to improve the Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe, Tau Hu – Ben Nghe, Doi – Te, Thay Cai – Can Giuoc canals and on building urban waste water treatment plants.

These include the Binh Hung Hoa Plant in Binh Tan District, which has the capacity of 30,000 cubic meters per day. It uses bio-technology, collecting and treating waste water for the Den Canal valley area of 785 hectares.

The Binh Hung Waste Water Plant in Binh Chanh District is larger with a capacity of 141,000 cubic meters per day, and is in charge of treating the waste water from the residential quarters in many districts, covering an area of 1,000 hectares.

However, Son said these are located too far away to settle the problems of Dong Nai River. It is estimated that trillions of dong are needed to build more waste water treatment plans.

The representative of the HCM City Anti-flooding Program said city authorities are calling for investments from different sources to build 12 concentrated waste water treatment plants by 2015.

The plants are expected to have the capacity of 120,000-800,000 cubic meters per day.

However, Nguyen Thi Thanh My, deputy director of the HCM City Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, warned that trillions of dong would not help settle the Dong Nai River’s problems if other provinces and cities are uncooperative.