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Titanium exploitation threatening Mui Ne
3:52 PM,5/31/2012
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To date, the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment (MONRE) has granted six licenses on exploiting titanium in Binh Thuan province with the reserves of 1614.7 tons. Meanwhile, the Binh Thuan provincial authorities have granted 15 licenses on exploiting titanium on the area of 462.9 hectares with the reserves of two million tons.
In 2010 alone, 12 enterprises exploited 116,795 tons of heavy minerals. Most of the enterprises have been carrying out the exploitation at a scale which far exceeds the allowed levels in areas and depths.
Hoang Duong Tung, Deputy General Director of the Environment General Department, who has surveyed the titanium exploitation in Hoa Thang commune in Bac Binh district, said on Dat Viet that the exploitation has been carried out with rudimentary equipments, which would inevitably badly affect the environment.
“The technologies used for the exploitation are all primitive, which just aims to get ore materials for export,” he said.
There are five titanium processing factories in Binh Thuan. However, according to Dao Thanh Binh, Deputy Director of the Department for Mineral Control under MONRE, “though these are called ‘processing factories’, in fact, these are just ore separation plants”.
Under the current laws, after the titanium exploitation finishes, the earth at the titanium mines must be reverted to the original state. Therefore, exploiters have to plant trees to prevent from sand wind. However, in fact, many enterprises only plant trees on the excavated land just for form’s sake.
“The tree planting to regenerate the environment just can meet 30 percent of the requirements,” said Director of the Binh Thuan provincial Science and Technology Department Le Van Tien.
The most serious thing in titanium exploitation is that the areas for titanium exploitation are located near or around the Mui Ne bay – the biggest tourist destination in the province. Most of the titanium exploitation workshops are discharging waste directly to the environment. Especially, even the enterprises which have not got the license for discharging waste are still carrying out the exploitation.
According to Dr Nguyen Thanh Binh from the Da Lat Nuclear Research Institute, in order to avoid dispersal of radioactive waste, during the titanium sifting, raw ores must be stored in warehouses. Meanwhile, in order to avoid radioactivity, enterprises must not exploit in the coastal areas, because once the waste water flows to the sea, it will bring radioactivity.
Meanwhile, 90 percent of the black sand exploitation points in Binh Thuan are close to the sea.
Titanium has been bringing big benefits to Binh Thuan, but the high titanium reserves have also been causing a headache to local authorities, because the titanium exploitation has polluted the environment, while it has hindered the development of tourism projects.
Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon has quoted Huynh Giac, Director of the Binh Thuan Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, as saying that a lot of tourism projects in the province have been slow in implementation. Especially, some investors of tourism projects have purchased machines to exploit titanium right on the allocated land.
The titanium exploitation, for example, has been carried out on the land reserved for two big resort projects – Saigon-Ham Tam resort in La Gi town and Canh Vien resort in Ham Tan district, for one year.
He also said that many investors have delayed the development of tourism projects, reasoning that they need to exploit titanium. The enterprises have been excavating the land, thus polluting the environment.
Source: Vietnamnet |
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