VietNamNet Bridge – The 8km canal that runs through seven districts in HCM City may becoming polluted again as local people are throwing tons of rubbish into it every day.

At one time, the Nhieu Loc was known as the river that formed the city's northern border. The French renamed it the Arroyo De L'Avalanche after the Gunboat Avalanche sacked the city's defenses in the late 19th century.

Toward the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, the city became home to scores of squatters. Rapid urbanization in the next two decades reduced the water body to a polluted "black water canal" that flooded much of the city with raw sewage in light rain.

Changes began in 1993 when the city government started a project to rehabilitate the canal with the cost of trillions of Vietnam dong to relocate as many as 7,000 families with 50,000 people and to dredge millions of cubic meters of mud from the canal.

Then came 2003 when a sanitation project for the canal with funding mainly coming from the World Bank to clean the canal, to build waste treatment facilities and to install the wastewater pipeline system.

Along the canal, gardens were planted, sidewalks were widened, bridges were upgraded and fitness equipment was installed.

In May 2013, in a ceremony linked to World Environment Day, city authorities released an additional 200,000 fish into the canal and into another recently refurbished urban canal.

The project has also provided hundreds of thousands of residents with sanitation services and about 1.2 million with better flood control.

The rejuvenated canal has also boosted Ho Chi Minh City’s emerging reputation as an economic hub with a high quality of life.

The canal cleanup offered lessons for successful delivery of public works.

Hundreds of cafes, eateries and other essential service outlets have sprung up along the canal, and each afternoon, one can see visitors dropping in such venues, either for a quick coffee or food, or for gossip with friends.

Many young people in the city love to gather together in the afternoon for dining or drinking, and the destination of choice for many is often the “embankment restaurant,” a term used to refer to any of the eateries along the canal characterized by good food, fresh air and affordable prices.

Recently, many travel companies in the city have been mapping out plans to launch tours on the canal for visitors as the scenery there is considered beautiful.

The environment along the canal is poised to further improve as the city government is about to implement the second stage of the Nhieu Loc Thi Nghe sanitation project, also financed with hundreds of millions of dollars by the World Bank.

By developing a huge lake in District 2 for storing and treating wastewater from the entire basin of the canal, it is believed that the project will help create a cleaner and fresher environment, and areas along the canal will be good place to live, work and play. The canal is being further revived.

However, the canal now suffers four to five tons of waste a day, discharged by the people living along the canal, said Deputy Director of the HCM City Urban Environment Company, Nguyen Minh Hoang.

Hoang said his workers had been collecting 11-12 tons of rubbish from the canal every two to three days.

In 2014, tens of thousands of fish died in the canal twice due to pollution.

The level of organic pollution had decreased, but now it has risen again, said Cao Tung Son, Vice-chief of the HCM City Environment Protection Bureau.

VNE