The 24 projects that will ease this situation include building hydropower plants to develop the sustainability of the river basin, check pollution levels, evaluate the effects of industrial waste and develop projects to protect the water resource.

Inspectors will identify companies that cause heavy pollution to the Sai Gon River basin, canals and spew wastewater. Inspectors will penalize polluting enterprises and suspend those that cause pollution

Vu Duc Hung, director of the Dau Tieng Irrigation Exploitation Company warns of the dangers of high levels of pollution flowing from daily wastewater discharge into the Dau Tieng Lake, which is causing the quality of water from becoming bad to worse.

In Ho Chi Minh City, relevant authorities have just discovered and penalized 6 IZs and EPZs, whose wastewater discharge was found to exceed permitted limits.They were ordered to make sure their waste treatment plants met with required standards within 30 days.

Some six of the 37 polluters in Ho Chi Minh City have not cleaned up their operations, while eight of the 112 polluters in Binh Duong Province have not yet upgraded their pollution treatment plants to meet the required standards.

The Mekong River Commission (MRC) Secretariat review of transboundary social issues related to Laos’ controversial proposed Xayaburi hydropower dam on the Mekong River focuses mainly on the consequences of environmental impacts, the Secretariat said in its latest report.

the Mekong River would seriously divert water flow, stopping over 50 per cent of alluvial soil running to its lower reaches, exterminating ecological diversification in the river valley and causing unmeasurable corollaries at the river mouth.

The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Natural Resources and Environment will impose fines or suspend operations of industrial and export processing zone investors if they violate environmental regulations.

The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Natural Resources and Environment says that despite finding numerous cases of companies causing industrial pollution, violators seem to be let off with a mere fine.

The sudden off-season rains during last weekend were insufficient for the parched area. Several canals in Soc Trang, Bac Lieu and Ca Mau provinces have been depleted to the extend that people can walk bare feet across them.

The HCMC government has just imposed fines totaling VND661 million on ten enterprises in the city for discharging harmful wastewater and exhaust fumes into the environment, said an official.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) on March 3 warned investors in dam construction projects in the Mekong River to learn the lesson from the dam on Mun River in Thailand, a failure in terms of economic, environmental and social impacts.

The Mekong Delta is known as Vietnam’s biggest rice producing and fish farming area responsible for half of total food output and 40% of fishery production in the country. The Lower Mekong River’s annual natural flood cycle makes the delta’s rice fields fertile and brings migratory fish species to local fisheries-dependent communities.

A report by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment stated that 10 out of 71 factories inspected emitted nitrogen dioxide at levels higher than permitted, while 23 discharged carbon monoxide at levels above what was allowed.