Lào Cai rejects investment projects causing environmental pollution

LÀO CAI — The northern mountainous province of Lào Cai has recently rejected two investment projects that have high potential to cause negative impacts on the environment, especially in Bảo Thắng District’s Tằng Loỏng Industrial Park.

The two projects include building a thermal power plant by Đức Giang Chemical One Member Co., Ltd and the second phase of building an acid production plant of Nam Tiến Joint Stock Company, Tin Tức (News) newspaper reported.

In order to treat solid waste, Lào Cai Province granted a licence to an enterprise for building a hazardous and industrial waste treatment plant.

The province also installed an automatic emission monitoring station in Tằng Loỏng Industrial Park and a system to receive automatic monitoring data from enterprises in the industrial park.

Nine businesses in Tằng Loỏng Industrial Park have installed automatic emission monitoring systems and three others are also required to build the same system.

The provincial Department of Natural Resources and Environment has required businesses to strictly comply with the co妹妹itments on solid waste treatment in the environmental impact assessment reports that were approved by competent agencies.

Tằng Loỏng is known as an industrial park that attracts many biggest chemical projects in the country.

However, a lack of investment in environmental protection as well as low awareness of laws on environmental protection have caused a series of incidents in recent years, affecting local people’s lives and the ecosystems of surrounding areas.

So far, the industrial park has attracted  三 一 investment projects, of which  二 五 have been put into operation, according to provincial portal.

To solve the environmental problem, the province has allocated capital to build two concentrated wastewater treatment plants with the total investment of over VNĐ 一 五0 billion (US$ 六. 四 八 million).

The province has required businesses to build a system to collect wastewater and install water flow meters and connect to the concentrated wastewater treatment plants.

The provincial People's Co妹妹ittee has assigned the Department of Natural Resources and Environment to coordinate with relevant units to publicise automatic emission monitoring data in order to promote the supervision role of grassroots administrations, especially people. — VNS