HÀ TĨNH — Two companies involved in an illegal case of hazardous waste landfill in central Hà Tĩnh Province have been fined a total VNĐ1 billion or US $45,000.

The province People’s Committee on Saturday fined Taiwanese Hưng Nghiệp Formosa Steel Plant and a local contractor involved in the waste treatment of the plant.

The committee said Formosa was fined VNĐ560 million for transferring the treatment of its hazardous waste to an unqualified company. Meanwhile, Kỳ Anh District’s urban environment company was fined VNĐ450 million for polluting the environment by undertaking landfill of untreated industrial hazardous waste.

Earlier in July last year, local residents discovered waste from Formosa being transported to a forestry plantation of the district environment company’s director for landfill. Following checks at the site, authorities found many packs of muddy waste taken from Formosa’s waste reservoir in holes at the plantation.

In related news, authorities in Hà Tĩnh and neighboring Quảng Bình Province destroyed 435 tonnes of frozen seafood that was contaminated with toxins from the Formosa toxic spill in April last year into the ocean near Hà Tĩnh, Quảng Bình, Quảng Trị and Thừa Thiên- Huế.

It comprised 362 tonnes of seafood stored in Hà Tĩnh’s Lộc Hà District and 73 tonnes kept in 11 warehouses around Quảng Bình. The seafood was harvested in the ocean areas affected by Formosa toxins.

Last month, the government agreed to expand compensation to traders and fishermen who had contaminated seafood stored but the quantity has not been transferred to related agencies to be destroyed.

Thousands of tonnes of seafood harvested in the affected ocean areas after the Formosa toxic spill were collected for landfill earlier this year in the four provinces, ensuring the contaminated seafood could not be consumed in the market. — VNS