Farming barnacles and fishes in cages has been feeding thousands of households in the Long Son commune in Vung Tau City of Ba RiaVung Tau province in Vietnam.
However, the aquaculture has been attacked by the serious pollution caused by the processing factories and sand exploitation, according to Tuoi tre.
In the commune, there were once thousands of oyster trellises and hundreds of fish cages. However, many of them near the Cha Va Bridge have been left idle for the last many months. Farmers have left for other areas after the oyster crops failed, caused by the serious water pollution.
However, farmers now also do not feel secure in the new areas, also on the Cha Va River–but nearer to the seaport, and further from the seafood processing factories in Tan Hai commune of Tan Thanh district. The oysters now can avoid the polluted water, but they have been threatened with sand suckers.
Nguyen Van Cu, a farmer in Long Son commune, who has been farming oysters for the last 10 years, complained that less oysters have died in the new areas, but the income for farmers is very modest.
Another farmer in the commune said that everyone in the commune has had oysters, fishes and shrimps dying of the toxic water.
Nguyen Van Xuyen, a farmer, complained that he has four farmed ponds of grouper, but he still cannot harvest any kilo of fish.
According to Vo Van Mui, Chair of the Long Son Commune People’s Committee, the commune reserves 700 hectares for aquaculture, but the area has been jammed between the two polluted areas. Therefore, farmers go from the frying pan into the fire: they escaped the waste water from seafood processing factories to go into muddy waters.
Mui said that the current sand exploiter on the Cha Va River is Hoang Linh Company Ltd, which was licensed by the Ba Ria Vung Tau provincial people’s committee, while the exploitation would get expired only in some more years.
Meanwhile, the seafood processing workshops in Tan Hai Commune have not only killed aquatic creatures, but harmed people. Local residents everyday have to breathe the terrible odor from the workshops. Behind the processing workshops are the reservoirs containing waste water which then flows to the Cha Va River. The trees around the reservoirs have been fading because of the waste water.
Truong Thi Xien, a farmer, who has a shrimp pond near the processing workshops in Tan Hai, said that the shrimp breeders worth 30 million dong could not grow up.
There are only small tilapias in the pond, which can be sold at several thousands of dong per kilo.
We now cannot live on aquaculture any more. Therefore, my husband has to take extra jobs to earn our living, she said.
Le Tan Cuong, Head of the Ba Ria Vung Tau Environment Protection Sub-department, has confirmed after conducting testing measures that the fishes died in Long Son Commune because of the polluted water.
Cuong went on to say that the polluted water came from the waste water from the seafood processing factories, the mineral mining in the Cha Va River areas and the water polluted by fish feed.
Cong Thuong newspaper has cited a report by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development as reporting that black tiger shrimp have died in masses on 78,796 hectares of surface water in coastal provinces since May 2012 due to epidemics and polluted water.
VIETNAMNET Bridge