Boat spills 100,000 tons of fuel in Vietnam river: report
Pastor Dale Morgan
Boat spills 100,000 tons of fuel in Vietnam river: report*
HANOI, Jan 12 (AFP) Jan 12, 2008
More than 100 tons of petrol and kerosene spilled into a Vietnamese
waterway after two vessels collided last week, an official said
Saturday, in the latest case of growing industrial pollution.
About 40,000 litres of petrol, 70,000 litres of kerosene and a load of
construction material contaminated the Vam Co Dong river south of Ho Chi
Minh City after the accident, a local official said.
"We recovered several dozen litres of fuel," Nguyen Van Thuan, head of
the Long An provincial Natural Resources and Environment Department,
told AFP. "The cause of the collision is still unknown."
Environmental experts and the country's communist government have raised
concern about the heavy pollution of rivers by industrial parks arising
from former rice fields amid the country's 8.5 percent annual economic
growth.
Contamination of the Saigon River, which flows through the industrial
hub and main port of Ho Chi Minh City, "has risen alarmingly due to
massive industrial and domestic discharges," the Thanh Nien daily
reported this week.
Tests by HCMC University of Technology and Japanese researchers have
shown heavy metal and bacterial pollution far above safe levels, the
newspaper said.
Bui Thanh Giang, head of a utility that treats the river water for Ho
Chi Minh City's water supply, said industrial parks and residential
areas pumped untreated effluent into the waterway and its tributaries,
the report said.
Vietnam's Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment, in its
first ever river pollution report last year, highlighted industrial and
medical waste pollution in the northern Cau and Nhue-Day and the
southern Dong Nai rivers.