About 500 residents at a tenement in Hanoi are in shock after knowing
that the well water they have used in the past several years has been tested
containing extremely high contents of deadly arsenic – up to 43 times higher
than the acceptable level.
The tenement, located in Tu Liem
District’s My Dinh Commune, was built by the Hanoi Real Estate Investment Joint
Stock Company (C’LAND) and then sold to about 150 families in 2007.
The water to this apartment block
is provided by C’LAND which sources the water from a drilled well.
“During the past 5 years, we
sometimes often found the water dirty, muddy and had a reddish color. We
reported it every time we found out and the company took some remedies but the
problem still continues,” To Minh Kien, representative of the tenement’s
residents, told Tuoi Tre.
On August 21, the residents sent
some water samples to the Chemistry Institute for tests and the result showed
that the samples are contaminated with arsenic at 37-43 times higher than the
acceptable level, Kien said.
A woman named Ngoc, who has a
9-month-old baby, passed out when she knew the result, Kien said, adding that
Ngoc had used the water, after purifying it using a normal filter, to prepare
milk for her baby everyday.
Bui Van Dong, another resident,
said, “My wife and children have had to live in another place in the past 2
years. Well water here is very harmful to health.”
‘They filtered the water first before testing it’
After the first test result was
announced, Mai Hoang Anh, deputy general director of C’LAND had told the
residents that on September 11 the company would send more water samples for
test.
However, one day before,
residents caught some people pouring a kind of chemical from four cartons to
the water treatment system at the drilled well.
The locals reported their
findings to the company and Anh explained that those people are staffs of Hoang
Hai Anh Services and Trading Co Ltd, which has been hired by C’LAND to treat
the well water.
Do Tien Truong, a resident, said,
“They [C’LAND] did so to minimize the actual content of arsenic before taking
the samples for testing, so that the test result can show an arsenic content
under the acceptable limit.”
Arsenic, a colorless and
tasteless chemical, is a harmful substance that can cause various diseases,
including cancer in skin, lung, liver and kidney.
Locals asked to pay for clean water
On September 13, C’LAND and Hoang
Hai Anh Co Ltd, held a dialogue with the affected residents to seek solutions.
The companies asked locals to pay
70 percent of the cost for building a pipeline system that will be connected to
the city’s running water supply but the meeting ended with no agreement made,
Kien said.
Talking with Tuoi Tre yesterday,
Anh said that his company C’LAND was facing financial difficulties and that he
hoped locals could sympathize with the company.
He also said he has ordered to
halt the supply of the contaminated well water to residents and advised them to
use clean water bought from other localities as an alternative source while
waiting for a satisfactory solution.
TUOI TRE
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