VietNamNet Bridge – The communes of My Thang and My An of Binh Dinh province are paying a heavy price for their unplanned shrimp farming: the production area has been damaged, while the environment has become seriously polluted.

In 2002, the Binh Dinh provincial People’s Committee decided to reserve 200 hectares of land in My An and My Thang Commune for shrimp hatchery.

A shrimp hatchery plan was planned, under which the provincial authorities paid for important infrastructure items such as roads, electricity network, water drainage system and waste water treatment, while Phu My District’s authorities was in charge of the shrimp hatchery management.

The shrimp farmed by the Phu My locals then “laid golden eggs”, especially in the years from 2002 to 2006. However, the “golden days” did not last long. The lack of a program for shrimp farming in a sustainable way, plus the local authorities’ mismanagement, both made the shrimp farming program fail.

Local farmers, who could earn billions of dong from shrimp hatchery, expanded the farming area, hoping to make bigger profits.

As a result, the environment got seriously polluted, which then killed masses of shrimp. Some shrimp farmers lost all of their assets after they injected all of their money into shrimp farms.Others went into decline.

Nguyen Van Ty, a farmer in My Thang, said the “golden age” of the My Thang’s shrimp farmers is over. “Shrimp were attacked by diseases, caused by farmers,” he said.

“Farmers did not spend money on waste treatment systems and did not think of cleaning the environment,” he explained. “I gave  up shrimp farming after I incurred big losses”.

According to Nguyen Truong Son, an official of My Thang Commune’s local authorities, the waste water system in the area has degraded, making it difficult to treat waste water.

Meanwhile, shrimp farmers have been exploiting underground water and discharging waste water directly from shrimp ponds to the environment, poisoning the environment.

The fresh water for shrimp ponds has been taken from the water wells drilled by shrimp ponds’ owners, while the fresh water reserve in the sandy area is limited.

In a vicious circle, the chemicals from the shrimp ponds, which are in the waste water, have been polluting underground water, which is used for shrimp farming.

Farmers were warned that they have to build waste treatment systems, or they would be forced to stop farming. However, all the shrimp ponds that news reporters visited in Hamlets No 8 and 9 were found to have no waste treatment systems.

Waste water has been discharged directly in the sea, while solid waste, including leftover feed, has been thrown into land areas near the shrimp ponds.

Will Binh Dinh people find other land areas for shrimp farming? Nguyen Thi Thanh Binh, Deputy Head of the Phu My District’s agriculture sub-department, said the local authorities do not intend to move shrimp farms to another area.

The most important thing for them to do now is to develop the shrimp farming area in a sustainable way with appropriate attention to environmental protection.

CAND