A pile of trash can be seen burning inside the Tay Bac solid waste treatment facility in Cu Chi District.
Its odor too spreads over a 10-km radius.
The landfill, the largest in HCMC, gets over 3,000 tons of garbage daily. There are two waste treatment companies in operation at the landfill, and they bury or burn trash they cannot recycle. Such outdated waste management methods are pollutng the surroundings.
On July 26 four excavators take trash from the trucks and pile them up for over 20 m. There are two other similar trash piles in the landfill.
Pham Thi Thanh Hien, chairwoman of the Cu Chi District People's Committee, says the facility was supposed to have trees to isolate it from its surroundings, but they have not been planted over the last 17 years due to lack of funds and procedural issues.
Barricades used to stop the stench from spreading are damaged and not properly in place. A stream of wastewater seeps from trash piled in the back.
Leachate from the garbage has caused a stream 100 m away from the facility to turn blackish and oily.
Hien says 400 families living near the landfill cannot farm since the wastewater has seeped underground.
Le Thi Tron, 75, who lives in Thai My Commune, in a pool of stinking wastewater beside her house. It used to be a field, but no crop has grown there for over 10 years due to the pollution.
She says: "If we grow rice, the plants will bloom but be weak and the grains will be small. Fruit trees would just die slowly."
Polluted water seeping into the ground has affected the groundwater and caused wells and their water to stink.
Tron's family uses a 100-liter tank to filter the water for dish-washing and laundry. For cooking and drinking, it has to either buy water or draw it from a 5,000-liter tank set up by local authorities.
Inside the family's 100-liter tank are layers of rocks, mesh, sand, and charcoal to filter the water.
Some families that used to live within a 500 m radius of the facility have left the place, abandoning their houses.
Some 4 km away from the landfill, 31-year-old Nam has installed nets around the house to prevent the wind from carrying the stench into his house. But the odor is still overwhelming sometimes, and the family has to close all doors and windows or use aromatic oil.
Nam says: "The stench has been here for several years. Our family is powerless against it."
A woman and her children wear masks as they ride past the waste treatment facility (in the background).
Hien says city authorities should soon plant trees around the waste treatment facility to stop the pollution.
The district has instructed the facility's management to provide clean water to families affected by the pollution.
