VietNamNet Bridge – Ngoc Lu Commune in Binh Luc District, Ha Nam Province is known as the biggest pig raising farm in the northern area, but the work has led to serious environmental pollution in the commune.

Illustrative image -- File photo

The commune has 1,600 pig raising households and discharges thousands of cubic metres of waste water and hundreds of tonnes of rubbish into the environment per day.

Bad smells from pig raising farms cover the commune while water in all ponds, lakes and canals in the commune has a black colour, according to the Vietnam News Agency's correspondent.

Tran Hien, owner of a pig raising farm, said that his family had raised pigs during the past dozens years. Now he is raising more than 100 pigs in a 300-square-metre cage.

He said did not treat his waste water and discharged it into canals.

According to Hien, the commune now is seriously polluted with lots of flies.

"My family has a 1,800-square-metre rice field but had not been used during the past years because the rice field is so polluted," he said.

Tran Thi Nhung, another resident, said that they could not transplant rice seedlings in most of the rice fields near canals.

Farmers also itched after working in the field, she said.

Not only do residents worry about pollution, they also have to worry about diseases.

Tran Thi Phuong, head of the Ngoc Lu Commune Medical Station, said that about 100 people in the commune have suffered from cancer during the past 10 years, mostly upper jaw, liver and rectum cancer.

The number of cancer patients rose year by year, she said, adding that many believed the environmental pollution partly caused the problem.

Tran Dinh Thien, deputy chairman of the Ngoc Lu Commune People's Committee, while admitting that environmental pollution had become a serious problem in the commune, said that cancer could have different reasons.

"Many people thought that it was caused by pollution, but so far no scientific research proved it," he said.

The commune authorities asked local residents to build biogas cellars so that all the waste from the pigs would flow into them. The biogas generated from the cellar is then led through a filtration system to filter out impurities.

But so far many households still discharged their untreated waste into the canals, said Thien.

Thien proposed that concerned organisations should have more consultations with local residents to prevent diseases and have sustainable breeding.

VNS