Fertilizer plant waste exceeds standards 2,000 times over in southern Vietnam

In addition to the fine, An Hung Nong Co. Ltd, the owner of the factory, must collect the overflow wastewater that has spread to the storage ponds of nearby residents within 10 days, Long An authorities announced Tuesday.

In mid-May, many internal canals spanning tens of kilometers turned black and emitted a foul odor. The pollution later spread to canals in Tien Giang Province, which borders Long An.

As those canals provide irrigation for hundreds of hectares of rice and pineapple fields, local authorities advised residents not to pump water for agricultural use.

Long An's functional departments conducted an inspection and discovered that wastewater was flowing from the plant onto a resident's land before spilling into a canal.

The plant produces 9,500 tons of organic fertilizer annually.

Authorities take samples of the water in a contaminated canal in Long An Province for testing, May 2024. Photo by VnExpress/Nam An

A representative of An Hung Nong stated that during wall construction, workers broke a pipeline, causing wastewater to flow into the canal at a rate of 3-4 cubic meters per day and night.

After the authorities collecting and testing samples, they found many indicators exceeded the permittable levels, such as suspended solids nearly 100 times, total phosphorus 44 times, and particularly, BOD5 and COD indicators surpassed the permissible limits by over 2,000 times.

Between 2019 and 2023 the company had already been fined nearly VND500 million on three different occasions for environmental pollution violations.