HCMC peninsula embankment repair to cost $3.8M

A 500-m section would be rebuilt, it said in a letter to the city government, the People’s Committee.

Over a month ago a 120-meter section on the right bank of the Thanh Da Canal, part of the Saigon River network, broke away, and since then the bank has kept subsiding, prompting the authorities to evacuate 13 families.

Thanh Da Peninsula, five kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City’s downtown, spreads over 635 ha.

Surrounded by the Saigon River and Thanh Da Canal, an artificial waterway linked with the river, the peninsula is prone to erosion. In 2006 the city began construction of an anti-erosion embankment on the peninsula.

It was divided into four sections.

Only one, costing VND110 billion (US$4.65 million) and running more than two kilometers, has been completed. The eroded area is in that section.

According to the department, the fund it estimated will also be used to upgrade the drainage system and build a park. However, the cost of land has yet to be included.

Bui Hoa An, the department’s deputy director, said the eroded embankment section was built in 2009 when there were no houses in the area.

It was regulated then that houses must be built at least 10 m away from the embankment, but many have been built as close as 3.5 m from it, resulting in high load capacity for the embankment, he said.

Referring to the unfinished embankment sections, the Transportation Works Construction Investment Project Management Authority, which manages the project, said recently that by August it would terminate the contract with the two contractors building the second and fourth sections, and penalize their tardiness, which has delayed the entire project.