More than 10,000 tonnes of rotting domestic waste in Ha Noi’s Chuong My, Thach That and Quoc Oai districts will be cleared next week. The garbage had been left on streets and at the premises of the Xuan Mai Urban Environment Company since early this year, causing annoyance for local residents while polluting the surrounding areas.
On Wednesday, the city’s Department of Construction and the Environment Police checked the recently-completed No 3 dump hole, which cost VND6.3 billion (US$350,000), in Tan Tien Commune of Chuong My District and decided to make it operational, said company representative Vu Quoc Minh.
"It will take a fortnight to move the rubbish to the dump hole and clean the streets. The rubbish will be sterilised twice a week to avoid pollution and diseases until it is cleared," he said.
Waste water from the No 2 dump hole in the Tan Tien Commune in the Chuong My District, where most domestic rubbish from the three districts was being buried, leeched out and polluted water sources, said the company’s director, Nguyen Ngoc Oanh.
The company was forced to stop using the dump hole and move more than 6,000 tonnes of rubbish to the Xuan Son Dumping Ground in Son Tay Town. The management board there declined to take more after it became overloaded early this year, Oanh said. Since then, all domestic rubbish was either thrown on streets or left at the company’s premises.
Many households complained their paddy fields and other crops were destroyed by the polluted water while the smell was annoying, said Nguyen Thi Ha, a resident of Tan Tien Commune in Chuong My District. "I am lucky to live far from the area."
The collection would help ease the smell that annoyed those who work in fields and pass through the commune.
Oanh said maintenance of the No 2 dump hole was finished and it would be reactivated once the appropriate certification was received.