HCM CITY — HCM City plans to allocate more than VNĐ1 trillion (US$45 million) to curb air pollution at the Đa Phước Waste Treatment Complex and Đa Phước Cemetery in outlying Binh Chánh District.

Under a recently approved programme to reduce air pollution until 2020, the city will spend VNĐ1,070 billion on site clearance, resettlement of households, and the planting of trees to segregate the complex and the cemetery from nearby residential areas.

The move aims to reduce foul odour coming from the waste treatment complex.

Affected households that need to be relocated are now living on 268ha, according to city authorities.

The programme also calls for HCM City to develop 54 environmental projects worth VNĐ64.2 trillion ($2.87 billion).

Of the figure, VNĐ51.3 trillion ($2.3 billion) has been allocated to build facilities to collect and treat household wastewater as well as dredge canals by using Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) and Official Development Assistance (ODA).

HCM City is seeking VNĐ2 trillion ($88.7 million) in investment from the private sector in solid waste treatment with cutting-edge technologies and a capacity of 1,000 to 2,000 tonnes a day.

The city is also calling for investment worth more than VNĐ2 trillion from other sources in facilities to collect, transport and transfer solid waste in the 2018-20 period.

To improve waste treatment citywide, the city will recycle waste to make compost fertiliser, and will burn 40 per cent and bury 60 per cent of garbage.

The city will also classify waste at sources to keep up with new technologies and the capacity of solid waste treatment plants.

At the end of August, residents in the southern part of the city, mostly in District 7 and Nhà Bè and Bình Chánh districts, had filed complaints with the city’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment about a foul odour originating from the Đa Phước complex.

A month later, Võ Văn Hoan, head of the city’s People’s Committee, confirmed that the odour was coming from the Đa Phước complex in Bình Chánh District.  

The complex covers hundreds of hectares and has rubbish 25ms high. The pile of rubbish is expected to reach 40m in height soon.

Đa Phước Complex was built on soft wet land in Đa Phước Commune in Bình Chánh District.

In the first phase of the project, a dumping ground covering an area of 30.6 ha was set up. It was designed to have a capacity of 10,000 tonnes of waste a day.

Recently, however, more and more doubts about the complex’s capabilities have been raised, especially after city management agencies discovered problems there.

Under a waste treatment contract signed with city authorities, the investor of the complex, Việt Nam Waste Solutions (VWS), after receiving solid domestic waste, was supposed to classify the waste, recycle it, make compost fertiliser and reuse plastic waste. The rest was to be dumped.

HCM City inspectors, however, said earlier this year that VWS had dumped all of its waste it had received and had not treated it properly.

The huge volume of waste carried to Đa Phước over the last 10 years has piled up, creating mountains of garbage. — VNS