Hundreds of residents in Yen Binh Town, northern Yen Bai Province, have been forced to struggle with the stench from a nearby waste dumping station every day for the past ten years.
The station, intended to be temporary, was set up just 150m away from houses in the town and sits next to Yen Binh's cemetery.
Nguyen Thi Tuu, a local resident, said her family have lived with the resultant environmental pollution for more than ten years.
"There are a lot of flies and mosquitoes around here and preventive measures like spraying chemicals does not kill all of them," she said.
"They burn the rubbish manually and do not classify it into different categories first, which means that the smell is especially bad. Even the water resources are contaminated," she added.
Another resident, Kieu Van May, said their lives were seriously affected because of the dumping station. "We have to close doors very tightly to prevent flies and mosquitoes from entering, particularly during meals," he said.
However, no disease caused by the pollution has been recorded so far.
Deputy Secretary of the Yen Binh District Party Committee Phung Dinh Lai confirmed that the waste dumping station was creating pollution.
He said local authorities had planned to build a proper site but had not identified a suitable location. Now they are waiting for a waste treatment facility to be built by a local company in nearby Van Tien Commune before moving all waste from the Yen Binh dumping station there, Lai added.
In the meantime, local authorities have asked the district's Transport and Environment Office to temporarily bury the waste, burn the garbage and spray chemicals to kill flies and mosquitoes.
Source: Vietnamnet.vn
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