The Athena Company in HCM City was yesterday discovered to be seriously violating environment protection regulations.

Untreated wastewater from Athena Company discharged directly to An Ha Canal. — Photo vov.vn

During an inspection of a 5,000sq.m production workshop yesterday, the municipal police found the company was discharging untreated wastewater directly into An Ha Canal. The untreated wastewater, coming from units that were washing, printing and dyeing cloth, was being discharged at a rate of 23cu.m per day, the police said.

The police also found more than 60 containers of toxic waste of urea, printing ink, diesel and fluorescent lamps, which were lying scattered inside and outside the workshop.

The company's owner was not present during the inspection. The workshop's representative could not show any business registration certificate, environment impact evaluation report, licences for waste discharge and environment standard certificates.

The company's technical expert said the firm had not built a wastewater treatment system yet.

The police collected two samples of the wastewater to analyse the toxic level.

The company had been fined VND120 million (US$5,500) in September for violating environment protection regulations, and VND15 million (US$700) for not having the business registration certificate.

Wastewater destroys cultivable land

Wastewater discharged by several hospitals has destroyed 56.6ha of cultivable land of farmers in Quang Thinh Commune, Thanh Hoa Province.

The farmers in the commune said the land had been used for growing paddy earlier, but in recent years, wastewater from hospitals had polluted the land and water so seriously that plants could not grow.

The wastewater is being discharged by Thanh Hoa General Hospital, the provincial Maternity Hospital, the Mental Hospital and the Eye Hospital, besides the Dermatological Hospital.

The hospitals are very old and the infrastructure and wastewater treatment systems are in very poor condition.

According to the results of a wastewater analysis done by the provincial Natural Resource and Environment Department, the toxicity of the wastewater from the hospitals was ten times above the permitted level.

This was the main reason for the 56.6ha of land being abandoned, badly affecting the lives of 200 households.

VNS