A 93 km long sea dike in the southernmost province of Ca Mau is riddled with holes, allowing water to destroy crops and forcing hundreds of households to flee to safety.
Huynh Cong Hieu, vice chairman of the People’s Committee of Khanh Tien Commune in U Minh District, said he has never seen seas as rough as the ones battering the dike over the last few days.
Surging head-high waves have uprooted trees in a protective forest, which had worked as a natural buffer between the ocean and dike, before slamming into the bare dike.
Local resident, Tran Van Xia, told Tuoi Tre rough seas have gradually taken their toll on the forest over the past decade.
He said years before a protective ring of forest about 500m long used to protect the dike from the daily pounding of the ocean. Today, the sea has marched up to the back of his house and is now threatening the dike.
Completed in 2000 and standing at a height of 2.5 meters and a width of six meters, it borders Vietnam’s western territorial waters and overlooks the Gulf of Thailand.
Ho Quoc Dung, vice chairman of Tan Thuan Commune, said the sea has encroached into the forest by about 50 meters a year on average.
Le Anh Tuan, from the institute of climate change studies at Can Tho University, said the erosion is an all too familiar phenomenon in Ca Mau and other coastal spots in the Mekong Delta.
Rough seas and strong winds usually surge in October and November when the rainy season shifts to the dry season, he added.
The government is planning on pouring VND700 billion (US$39.2 million) into repairing the dike but has not set a start date, said To Ngoc Van, vice director of the Ca Mau Department for Agriculture and Rural Development.