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Aug 14, 2019 / 21:50

Hanoi considers spending US$6.4 million to clean up polluted river

Under this scheme, the West Lake will be used to relay water from the Red River to the To Lich river.

Hanoi Sewage and Drainage Company has proposed spending VND150 billion (US$6.4 million) on building a water pump station with a capacity of 156,000 cubic meters per hour to clean the To Lich river with the Red River's water and regulate the water level of the West Lake, VnExpress quoted  General Director of the company Vo Tien Hung as saying. 
 
A section of To Lich River.
A section of the To Lich river.
Under this scheme, the West Lake will be used to relay water from the Red River to the To Lich river. Accordingly, the West Lake's water will be discharged into the To Lich river to dilute the dirty water here and refilled with water pumped from the Red River. 

Hung stressed that this is an easier-to-make and more economical plan than the previous proposal to using the Nhue river to clean the To Lich river which may help improve To Lich river quality but incapable of balancing out the water level of the West Lake.

Besides, Hanoi also pilots cleaning the To Lich river with Japanese Nano-Bioreactor, of which the quality and the cost have not been revealed yet, and Germany's Redoxy3C inoculant, which has initially proven effective. 

“The city is also conducting a water cleaning project that gathers all wastewater in a sewage treatment plant in Thanh Tri district which is able to process 270,000 m3 per day,” Hung said, noting that the project will be completed in the next four years. 

The To Lich river used to be an icon of Hanoi for its beauty in the old times, but it has become black and stinky due to untreated wastewater and being the city’s huge cesspool. Hanoi has planned several solutions to restore the pulluted river but the result has been far from the desired one.