Water production at Hà Nội Clean Water Trading Company. —VNA/VNS Photo

Lê Văn Du, deputy head of the Technical Infrastructure Section at the Hà Nội Department of Construction, talks to Dân Việt newspaper on the need for a good supply of clean water for local citizens

Have the Hà Nội authorities adopted a strategy to provide steady clean water to its citizens which are expected to increase to nine million by 2030?

According to an official plan, by the year 2030 with the vision by 2050, Hà Nội will have one urban centre, plus five satellite centres with a total population of nine million people. By now the city authorities have already developed two plans on tap water supply by the year 2030 for both the urban and rural areas.

The Hà Nội authorities have also approved clean water supply to all its rural areas in accordance with the 2013 urban development plan.

All these plans are aimed at supplying enough water for all citizens of Hà  Nội.

However, there are two different types of clean water standard in Hà Nội. People living in the inner cities will have the tap water with the Quality Control 01 which was adopted in the year 2009 meeting all the 109 criteria set by the authorities. Meanwhile, the set of criteria for tap water in the rural area is somehow less as strict as those applied in urban cities. Therefore, Hà Nội will also work to improve water quality and water supply services to make it the same quality for all people across the city.

At present, Hà Nội supplies some 1.52 million cu.m of water each day, meeting basic demands of people living in the urban and adjacent rural areas. However, people in all rural areas still face a shortage of an estimated 500,000cu.m per day. 

Have the Hà Nội authorities any plans to supply clean water to every citizen?

According to an old plan on tap water supply, there were two different criteria for urban and rural areas. But now there is only one criteria applied to both urban and rural water. That means we have to make a change to the 2013 master plan on water supply for Hà Nội which was approved by the then Prime Minister.

Up to now, all Hà Nội water plants’ design output is around 1.52 million cu.m per day. Yet, it is calculated that in the Hà Nội’s inner areas alone, it needs at least 1.5 million cu.m per day. However, at present, the city could only supply 1.2 million cu.m per day; of which 650,000cu.m from the under ground water and 650,000cu.m from the surface water.

However, the volume of under ground water extraction will be gradually cut down to between 450,000-500,000cu.m per day in the future and water plants will have to take more surface water from the nearby outlying districts to ensure sufficient supply for residents in inner areas.

How do you respond to some people’s complaints that certain water plants providing water are not in line with the plan approved by the Prime Minister?

According to the water supply planning which was approved by the Prime Minister, Hà Nội would have three water plants using the feed in surface water from three rivers – the Đà, Đuống and Hồng rivers.

However, when implementing the water supply planning, the water supply areas could be changed to meet real conditions and supply capacity of water suppliers. In fact, in the course of designing the water supply network in urban areas, water supply plants will be connected so that they can easily support each other to ensure sufficient water supply for citizens in case of any incident occurs. — VNS