Dong Nai (VNA) - Officialsare deeply concerned about the “serious degradation” of water quality in the DongNai River basin. Their anxiety was conveyed at the recently held10th meeting of the Environmental Protection Commission of the LowCatchment Basin of the Dong Nai River.

This river’s catchment area covers 11 provincesand cities, including Dong Nai, Binh Duong, Binh Phuoc, Ba Ria – Vung Tau, TayNinh, Long An, Dak Nong, Ninh Thuan, Binh Thuan, Lam Dong and HCM City.

𝔉 From a socio-economic development perspective,the basin covers a crucially important region in the country.

The Dong Nai River supplies water to almost 20million people living in urban areas and industrial zones in the lower basin.However, the increasing demand for water has caused serious problems with thesurface water in the lower basin, with very serious contamination in someareas, particularly provinces situated in the southern economic region. Huynh Anh Minh, Vice Chairman of the Binh PhuocPeople’s Committee, said his province has three distributaries of the Dong NaiRiver – the Be, Sai Gon and Da Dang rivers. However, the water of all the threerivers are contaminated with effluents from production units, industrial parks,poultry farms, healthcare clinics and other establishments. Everyday, some29,700 cubic metres of effluents are dumped in the river, but as of now, only70 dumping sources have been identified. Referring to another problem that threatens thehealth of the nation’s river systems, Nguyen Toan Thang, Director of HCM CityDepartment of Natural Resources and Environment, said the city is facing a lotof pressure in its natural resources management as well as the task ofprotecting the environment of neighbouring provinces. In 2016, the city’s functional agencies seizedand fined 37 boats mining sand from the rivers. In addition, city authoritiesalso fined 15 boats transporting sand without proper papers, he said. Since 2003, protecting water sources in the DongNai basin has been identified as the responsibility of all provinces sharingthem. Thirteen years later, little progress has been made in protecting theenvironment, meeting participants agreed. In fact, they admitted that theproblem has worsened, with the environmental quality deteriorating. Annual reports from the Environmental ProtectionCommission have repeatedly said that the water in the Dong Nai Basin is beingseriously polluted by contamination of its tributaries. For example, HCM Citydumps a huge volume of wastewater onto the Dong Nai River basin everyday.Meanwhile, the water in the Dong Nai River itself has been contaminated bywater discharge from industrial production, households and solid waste fromBinh Duong and other provinces. Worse still, the river’s water is also beingcontaminated by dioxin from the Bien Hoa airport. Participants agreed on the need for strong,co-ordinated efforts by all provinces sharing the Dong Nai Basin resources toprotect the environment. Senior officials from Long An province saidviolators often dumped their waste into the river in areas adjacent to twoprovinces or localities. They knew that even if they were caught red-handed, itwould not be easy for authorities to punish them because “it needed time fortwo localities/provinces to sit together to work out the sanctions.”-VNA