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Taiwanese firm faces further probes
Vedan Vietnam, caught contaminating a river through an illegal underwater waste disposal system, has apologized for its dirty habits.
Authorities will spend another day examining the facilities of Taiwanese monosodium glutamate (MSG) maker Vedan Vietnam after discovering recent alterations to its illegal wastewater system.
An inspection team, comprising officials from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MNRE), the Ministry of Public Security, and the Dong Nai provincial government, Friday discovered that three screws had been changed and two new welded joints had appeared in the pipe system from which Vedan Vietnam has been dumping large amounts of untreated wastewater into the local Thi Vai River.
“This could serve as aggravating circumstances for Vedan Vietnam if the firm did it on purpose,” said Colonel Luong Minh Thao, deputy head of the inspection team.
“We can track down the culprit of a murder case just by a hair left at the scene, let alone this technical adjustment,” Thao said.
He said police would continue topore over the wastewater treatment system at Vedan Vietnam’s facilities in Dong Nai Province, 30 kilometers northeast of Ho Chi Minh City.
Since the toxic wastewater dumping was exposed on Saturday, police have discovered Vedan Vietnam discharged wastewater through pipes hidden deep below the water surface. The company may have been using this method since it began operating in Vietnam in 1994.
Apart from its “secret” wastewater releasing system, Vedan Vietnam used a modern wastewater treatment system when inspectors carried out checks, inspectors said.
During Friday’s official inspections, the company confessed to breaking at least 10 environmental codes.
Vedan Vietnam had released 10 times the permissible amount of effluent over the past 14 years, inspectors said. Each month the firm released some 44,800 cubic meters of wastewater into the Thi Vai River, increasing the risk of killing off all life forms in the river by 2050.
Vedan Vietnam had increased the capacity of its factories without conducting any environmental impact studies, inspectors said.
The Taiwanese firm has also evaded wastewater fees worth around VND91.8 billion (US$5.5 million) since 1994.
At a press briefing on Wednesday, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment said it recommended the Dong Nai provincial government suspend the operation of Vedan Vietnam. The Ministry also said it would revoke Vedan’s certificate to release treated effluents into the river and force the company to pay compensation for economic and environmental damage.
Vedan Vietnam Deputy Chairman K.H.Yang Friday admitted the firm had been wrong to discharge wastewater into the already contaminated Thi Vai River. Yang apologized for the company’s actions.
But when grilled by the media about whether he had known of the illegal wastewater dumping, Yang said he had learned about the practice at the same time as authorities.
Thanhnien
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