Vietnam, US Join Hands to Remove Dioxin at Da Nang Airport

After being decontaminated, the land will be returned to their original place to ensure integrity of the area.

So many barrels of Agent Orange at Da Nang airport.

(DA NANG Vietnam) - In a seminar yesterday, Vietnamese and US experts discussed the use of In-Pile Thermal Desorption (IPTD) technology in a US$43 million project to clean up dioxin contamination at Da Nang Airport.

As part of the cooperative project between USAID and the Vietnamese Ministry of National Defense, the IPTD environmental pollution treatment system would be used to clean up the toxic substance, Donald Steinberg, Deputy Administrator for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said at the seminar.

IPTD has been used in the US, EU and Asia to clean up harmful wastes and ensure environmental safety.

The project will be implemented carefully to protect the safety of the project workers as well as local people, Steinberg said.

A Da Nang resident catching fish and picking lotus stems from a lake known to have high concentrations of dioxin from Agent Orange. Photo by: Tuoi Tre

Major General Le Huy Vinh, Deputy Commander of Air Force and Air Defense, said he hoped the new technology would be effective in cleaning the contaminated land at the airport in the central city of Da Nang.

This project, which is expected to last until 2015, is the one that the governments and peoples of the two countries wish to implement, since it contributes to mending the consequences left by the Vietnam War before 1975, he said.

The project will be carried out on an area of 191,400 square meters of land in the airport and about 73,000 cubic meters of muddy land will be dug up to be treated with the IPTD system.

After being decontaminated, the land will be returned to their original place to ensure integrity of the area.

If the project is successful, it will create a foundation for possible similar projects to eliminate dioxin contamination in other hot spots in Phu Cat Airport in central Binh Dinh Province and Bien Hoa Airport in southern Dong Nai Province, Vinh added.

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Chuck Palazzo
Agent Orange Action Group
http://aoag.org/
Hoa Binh Chapter, Veterans For Peace
http://vfp-vn.ning.com/

chuck_pal@yahoo.com