Creek Gets Double Dose of Pig Waste

According to Thanhnien News.com, the provincial inspection team has ordered Truc Dien Company, in Lai Uyen Commune, Ben Cat District near Ho Chi Minh City, to stop the discharge and repair the damage to the environment.

Inspectors said Truc Dien, which breeds nearly 9,000 pigs, has been releasing 250 cubic meters of foul smelling black wastewater a day into the creek.

The company director Huang Jung Chua said the company would comply with the inspectors’ orders and only resume discharging wastewater once it had finished building a proper treatment plant including a waterproof settling pond to contain the effluent before it was treated.

In the earlier Ben Van creek incident last Saturday, a dyke of a 7.7-hectare wastewater treatment pond of pig breeder San Miguel Pure Foods Vietnam Co. broke releasing 200,000 cubic meters of contaminated material into the creek, killing large numbers of fish in Thi Tinh River downstream.

Vo Thi Ngoc Hanh, deputy director of Binh Duong Department of Natural Resources and Environment, later said that San Miguel may be fined or temporarily suspended if it fails to improve the wastewater to meet Vietnamese environmental standards by 19 August.

Also on Friday the environment authority of Dong Nai Province met with 30 businesses that were polluters in the heavily industrialized province.

Bien Hoa Industrial Zone Development Company was named for discharging wastewater with excessive amounts of lead, iron and coliform.

Wastewater tests at Tan Mai Paper Factory under Tan Mai Corporation and at Dong Tien Garment Joint Stock Company also exceeded safe levels of iron, coliform, nitrogen, sulfur and colorings, the department said at the meeting.

Similar findings were reported for all the companies present at the meeting.

The department has proposed Dong Nai People’s Committee and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to fine the firms and force them to install equipment to measure the pollution. More inspections of businesses in the province were planned with heavy penalties to be imposed for polluters.

The department on Friday also announced company directors had agreed to the cessation of several production stages that pollute the environment at AB Mauri Vietnam Company, under AB Mauri South & West Asia, earlier on Thursday.

Authorities have fined the joint venture between the provincial La Nga Sugarcane JSC and Mauri Fermentation Vietnam Company many times but the company has kept polluting regardless.

The company which began in 1995 has already been blacklisted by the province and subjected to local protests.