Da Nang residents block garbage dump to demand its relocation

Since Saturday afternoon people living near Khanh Son landfill in Lien Chieu District have been blocking its entry after failing to persuade city authorities not to turn it into a solid waste treatment complex.

To Van Hung, director of the city department of Natural Resources and Environment, said at a meeting with the public on Saturday the city wants to burn trash at the landfill.

To be built by a joint venture between the local Vietnam Environment Corporation and Hong Kong’s Everbright International, the proposed plant will have the capacity to treat 650 tons of trash a day when it becomes operational in late 2020.

Khanh Son, in use as a landfill now for nearly three decades, has become overloaded and poses a threat of pollution.

It receives 1,100 tons of garbage from the daily activities of 1.2 million Da Nang residents, not to mention from hospitals and industries.

It has so far received 3.2 million tons of trash and can only remain in operation for another 200 more days.

Locals have been demanding that authorities should move the landfill away, and this is not the first time they have blocked garbage trucks.

Authorities had promised the landfill would be shifted this year. But they changed their mind in May, when they said moving it is not a rational solution, with Hung saying: "If we choose to move it, what will be the solution for the existing 3.2 million tons of trash?"

"Upgrading the landfill into a waste treatment complex using advanced technology will help solve the pollution problem, and, at the same time, treat all the trash," he said.

In May the city, the third largest in Vietnam after Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, had asked the Military Zone 5 Command for 7.7 hectares (19 acres) of land for expanding the landfill. Military Zone 5 covers the Central Highlands and south-central Vietnam.