VietNamNet Bridge – The HCM City People’s Committee has released a regulation on wastewater zoning and wastewater standards with stricter requirements than the ones currently in force in the city.

The regulation, which takes effect on May 16, says that the wastewater discharged from the Ky Hoa and Dam Sen Lakes, the lake in Hoang Van Thu Park and some sections of Saigon and Dong Nai Rivers must meet the class A standard.

This is the strictest requirement in the currently applied Vietnamese wastewater management system. The wastewater must be thoroughly treated to eliminate toxins before it is discharged to the environment.

City authorities have also set up standards for wastewater to be applied to 97 rivers, streams and canals in order to fight against the serious pollution which affects the running water supply sources of the city.

Nguyen Van Phuoc, Deputy Director of the HCM City Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, said the standards have been made public and those enterprises which do not meet the requirements will be heavily punished.

An expert from the HCM City Institute for Natural Resources and the Environment said that, at present, no river or canal water source in the city meets the requirements for supplying clean water. The Saigon River, which is the main water source for HCM City and Binh Duong Province, also has bad water quality, with BOD, COD, N-NH4, Fe and DO  much higher than permitted levels.

Also according to the expert, the volume of industrial waste water discharged in the Saigon-Dong Nai river valley has reached 180,000 cubic meters per day. If counting the wastewater discharged to the canals in the city, the total volume of waste water is 1.2 million cubic meters per day.

Once the new regulations take effect, waste discharge licensing will be handled by the HCM City Environment Sub-department, after considering the required wastewater standards for different zones.

In general, water going to the canals and river sections, from which water is taken to supply households, must meet the Class A standard. Areas from which water is taken for agriculture, aquaculture and industrial production and must meet Class B standards.

The latest report by the HCM City Department of Natural Resources and Environment disclosed that there are some 3,300 sources of waste discharge, comprised mostly of production workshops, trade and service establishments. Of these, only 35 percent (1,140 out of 3,300) have wastewater treatment systems meeting the requirements.

The department admitted that it can only control 80 percent of the waste sources with output of 50 cubic meters a day and higher, 50 percent of the sources with output of 30-50 cubic meters and 30 percent of those emitting 10-30 cubic meters per day.

The watchdog agency has proposed that the city’s People’s Committee force enterprises which discharge more than 1,000 cubic meters of waste water per day to install automatic monitoring systems which connect with a central system. This would help provide updated information to the watchdog agency for timely solutions.

Thien Nhien