Vietnam Central Coastal Province Evaluates Pollution Damage from Formosa

Authorities in Vietnam’s central coastal province of Thua Thien-Hue has decided to establish a council to assess the damage caused to the province by a steel mill of the Taiwanese Formosa Plastic Group after the firm was officially named the culprit behind the mass fish deaths. The 16-member council will be led by Vice Chairman Nguyen Van Phuong of provincial executive body People’s Committee. Thua Thien- Hue is one of the four provinces in central Vietnam negatively affected by Formosa’s illegal discharge of toxic wastewater into the sea. The other localities included Ha Tinh, Quang Tri and Quang Binh. The council will be in charge of assigning tasks, forming support teams and instructing lower level councils to calculate the exact damage from the environmental disaster. In addition, the council will look at how to recover from the disaster and stabilize local production based on the respective regulations and situations in each locality, and then report back to the central government. The council must ensure accuracy, transparency and fairness in its damage assessment and will be disbanded once the task is complete. Ha Tinh province formed its own council on June 30. Formosa on June 30 apologized to Vietnam and pledged to pay $500 million in compensation for the environmental pollution it caused in central Vietnam. In early April, large quantities of fish washed up dead near the Vung Ang Economic Zone in Ha Tinh province. The disaster stretched 200 kilometers along the central Vietnamese coast, as far south as Thua Thien-Hue, resulting in the death of more than 70 tons of marine species and 35 tons of farm-raised fish. Especially hard hit were Ha Tinh, Quang Tri, Quang Binh and Thua Thien Hue provinces where thousands of fishermen lost customers or were forced to sell at a loss. The real volume of the dead fish was much bigger and the consequences of the environmental disaster will remain for five-seven decades, said experts and environmentalists. It is unclear on which Vietnam’s government determined the size of Formosa’s compensation value of $500 million when the investigation of the environmental catastrophe has not been started in the affected localities, said environmentalists, adding the committed sum is not enough for cleaning the polluted waters and assisting affected fishermen, salt farmers and people working in the local tourism businesses.  (VnExpress.net July 3)