VietNamNet Bridge - Though Dong Nai River is being protected by the powerful Dong Nai River Protection Committee, it is still dying.

 

 

In 2009, the Dong Nai River Protection Committee was established to protect the environment in the river system’s valley until 2020. The twelve provinces which share benefits from the river, which are members of the committee, committed to join forces to save and protect the river, which scientists say is getting more seriously polluted.

Since then, a lot of meetings have been organized by the committee to discuss the methods to protect Dong Nai. The members discuss the policies and legal documents, and look for resources and sign agreements on exploring the river sharing benefits.

The committee has one chair. However, despite the meetings and the high power assigned to the committee’s members, Dong Nai is still dying. 

A report of the committee released late last week gave everyone a start: Dong Nai is ‘terribly polluted’. The word ‘terribly’ was used by the representative of the environment protection agency who said that there are about 4,500 waste discharge points throughout the Dong Nai river system valley. 

It seems that even the committee with full power cannot protect Dong Nai from people’s behaviors of poisoning it. Despite regulations and executive bodies, production enterprises still discharge untreated waste into the Dong Nai river every day.

Many production workshops have no waste water treatment systems. Others have been found not using their waste water treatment systems in order to cut expenses. The volume of waste water has become unbearable to Dong Nai, which provides water to tens of millions of people in 12 provinces and cities.

A report of the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment (MONRE) in 2008 showed that Dong Nai had to bear 25,000 cubic meters of waste water from the husbandry farms, craft villages and industrial production workshops.

And it has a new figure: 990,000 cubic meters of domestic waste water goes to the Saigon-Dong Nai River system every day from the urban areas on the river. 

The Dong Nai River Protection Committee is nearly 10 years old, a period long enough to discover a solution to rescue Dong Nai. However, the situation is getting worse.

Most recently, residents in Dong Nai province have asked for help as they feared the project on building an urban area which encroaches on Dong Nai River will damage the environment and landscape. 

TBKTSG