Quang Ninh (VNA)- The water environment in the world-renowned Ha Long Bay has been undertremendous pressure from the growing socio-economic activities in the area.

Recognised twice by the UNESCO as a global heritage, Ha Long Bay remains one ofthe country’s top attractions – drawing in 9.87 million tourists last year, ofwhich, 4.28 million are foreign tourists, bringing in 797 million USD inrevenues, up 30 percent against 2016.

Everyone it seems wants a slice of the pie with a boom in accommodation –12,000 rooms, 80 hotels, and 512 cruises (including overnight ones).

Pham Dinh Huynh, deputy head of the bay’s management board, said theinternational recognition of the Bay has been a boom to the province’sdevelopment but also causes a lot of troubles for the authorities.

Ha Long Bay is not just a purely tourist site. Several vital socio-economicactivities make use of the bay – marine transport route cuts through the bay tomove goods from Cai Lan Port to Hai Phong Port and others, aquacultureactivities on the water surface, in addition to the rapid expansion of coastalurban areas including the planned development of the special economic zone VanDon.

Dang Van Bai, vice chairman of the Vietnam Heritage Association, shared hisconcerns over whether the understaffed management board could be capable ofoverseeing the 438sq.km heritage area with 788 islands of various sizes.

The issue of wastewater involves many stakeholders, coming from differentplaces, discharging different types of wastewater – coal mining, operations offishing vessels, operations of hotels or restaurants – therefore, anyunilateral action plan would not be effective, stressed Jake Brunner, programmecoordinator of International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in Vietnam.

Ho Quang Huy, vice chairman of the provincial People’s Committee, acknowledgedthat the future of the bay depends on commitments to particular measures tosafeguard its environment. Huy said that the province is hastening the buildingof legal frameworks to make sure a rigorous implementation of the environmentmaster plan envisioned for the bay, as well as mechanisms for cooperationbetween competent bodies.

The role of community-based campaigns conducted by both the State organisationslike youth’s union, women’s association, as well as civil societies are alsounderlined, with specific activities such as awareness raising campaigns heldacross schools in the area, or clean-up operations on the beach and over thewaters.

Huy also said that in the future, the authorities will need to holdcomprehensive water quality monitoring more frequently, at least once everythree months, as well as more unannounced inspections to timely preventviolations.

The operations of the hundreds of cruise ships in the Ha Long Bay areainevitably results in bilge water, and the pollution threats from this oilymixture poses are so dangerous that three years ago, the province has ordered ahalt on building any more tourist cruise, otherwise the number would not justbe kept at the current 500-600 but might swell to thousands, Huynh said.

“Previously, with lax regulations, most cruises operated without supervision,only recently the province has started to enforce stricter rules, but at themoment, only 10 percent of the cruises are outfitted with bilge water treatmentsystem, while the remaining 90 per cent are old-schooled sailboats and couldnot be added such a system,” he said.

However, even so, according to IUCN, with experts’ estimating the dailywastewater discharge from cruises reaching some 502cu.m, a treatment systemthat is capable of handling the total amount of wastewater could cost around 3.1million – 1.2 million USD for 12 boats for collecting bilge water, 800,000 USDfor port-based treatment plants, and 500,000 USD for necessary on-boardequipment for cruises. The daily operational cost for the entire system wouldcome to 251 USD a day, which would require cruise operator to pay up to 5 USDper cu.m of wastewater handled.

Nguyen Duy Phu, Chairman of the Pelican luxury cruise company, said they havestudied IUCN’s figures and concluded that the actual number of ships needed tocollect bilge water from all cruises operational in the bay would be at leastfive times higher than the suggested figure, which would mean the totalinvestment needed for the wastewater treatment would rocket to a dozen milliondollars.

Phu also shared the bay management board’s position that despite variousefforts and programmes by the province, “it’s not enough, and would never beenough if we only rely on State resources.”

Do Van Ha, Director of the Ha Long JSC, said the tourist companies are willingto co-operate with authorities to design the wastewater treatment system in thebay. Ha also suggested that the tourist companies could ‘start with smallthings’ right now, for example, switching to the use of biopolymer packaging aswell as cooperation with local people to collect and recycle plastic waste.

Recently, Quảng Ninh Province has implemented a 29.6 million USD programme(sourced from Japan’s ODA) to collect waste on land, but a water protectionprogramme in similar veins is still lying in waiting.

When Vietnam is preparing documents to seek the third recognition of Ha LongBay as the world heritage site from UNESCO, it’s highly important that thewater resources in the area are put under tighter control.-VNA