Quynh Ba (Quynh Luu): Caring for environmental protection

(Baonghean) - In order to meet the criteria of ensuring the environment in new rural construction, in recent years, the Party Committee, government and people of Quynh Ba commune (Quynh Luu) have always been concerned and implemented many positive solutions.

In the first days of the new year in Quynh Ba commune (Quynh Luu), we noticed that the village roads and alleys were cleaner and the environment was fresher than in previous years. In hamlet 3, people were focusing on taking care of the spring rice crop, while also organizing the clearing of sewers and pouring concrete on the bottom of drainage ditches. The whole hamlet 3 is striving to complete the pouring of concrete on 900m of ditch bottoms.

While mixing concrete with the villagers, Mr. Dang Cong Dung excitedly said: “For many years, environmental pollution has been a burning issue in the village. Therefore, when launching the campaign to ensure environmental hygiene, the villagers responded with agreement. We all strive to protect the environment with specific actions such as each household in the area must be aware of keeping the environment clean and beautiful. With a clean environment, the villagers celebrate Tet more happily, especially the children returning from far away, everyone is happy because of the changes in their homeland.”

Comrade Nguyen Thanh Tan - Party Secretary of Hamlet 3, added: “In the past, people often threw garbage on the street. But now, people have changed by gathering, classifying garbage, and dumping garbage on the right day and in the right place. Now, Quynh Ba people voluntarily pay environmental sanitation fees. At the same time, households have built wastewater settling tanks before discharging into the common canals…”.

People in hamlet 3, Quynh Ba commune (Quynh Luu) concreted drainage ditches.

Quynh Ba is a low-lying area, in the rainy season, the drainage system from neighboring communes flows down, often causing local flooding in Quynh Ba, leading to serious environmental pollution. Meanwhile, people's lives are increasingly improved, leading to an increasing amount of domestic waste, an average of 3 - 4 kg/person/month, the rate of waste collected and treated on-site is at a low level. Most of the domestic and livestock wastewater has not been treated, and is discharged directly into public ditches. The commune has not planned and built a centralized landfill, so many households dump waste in public places, at points bordering communes, on major roads, on drainage canals, especially in locations such as: around Muc Son slough, on the banks of Binh Son 2 canal, Doi Thung canal, Cau Quan, on inter-commune roads... Some households still compost on the street. The whole commune has 16 households providing milling and rice husk dust discharge services, 4 households slaughtering pigs on a small scale at home, and have not yet built a centralized slaughterhouse. In addition, there are 7 restaurants in the area, nearly 200 households providing services in the market, and the drainage system is still limited, causing local pollution. In the dry season, the stench is strong; in the rainy season, dirty water flows through the ditches into residential areas, seriously affecting the water and air environment.

Before 2005, Quynh Ba commune had a policy of each hamlet allocating 250m2 of land to arrange a centralized landfill, but no hamlet agreed to let the landfill be located in their hamlet. In 2008-2010, Quynh Luu district directed the commune to plan a landfill and build waste transfer points, but it was still not implemented. In 2010, the local situational plan was to temporarily bury the waste, but due to the large amount of waste, after burying it, it blocked the flow of Cau Quan canal.

Comrade Nguyen Thanh Tung - Secretary of the Quynh Ba Commune Party Committee admitted: “The local Party Committee and government have been confused for many years to solve the problem of environmental pollution. Faced with urgent requirements, the Party Committee determined that it was necessary to focus on leading and directing environmental sanitation work well. The commune organized tours to visit models that did well in environmental sanitation work to learn from experience, while local leaders focused on researching the most effective solutions.

After discussion and consensus, in 2012, the Quynh Ba Commune Party Committee issued a specialized resolution on leadership of environmental sanitation work, assigning the Commune People's Committee to develop a project to ensure environmental sanitation. The project carefully surveyed the local environmental pollution situation, collected opinions from all walks of life in 8/8 hamlets, agreed on the content of the project and the environmental sanitation fee, and was approved by the Commune People's Council. After that, the Commune People's Committee implemented it specifically with a plan to collect and treat waste and establish an Environmental Sanitation Fund; a plan to treat scrap and pesticide packaging in the fields and cemetery areas. The policy was disseminated to cadres, Party members and people in the hamlets.

When the policy was highly supported by the people, the commune launched a campaign for the whole people to clean up the environment. The commune contracted to rent excavators and cars to transport nearly 40 trucks of garbage collected in residential areas to the district's centralized landfill. The initial step was successful, basically solving the long-standing backlog of garbage in the locality. Faced with the fact that the road to the cemetery in the commune was muddy and polluted the environment around this area, the commune directed the clans to contribute money to build roads to the cemetery and received the people's approval. Thanks to that, the roads to 4 cemeteries in the commune were upgraded and repaired.

In 2014, the Quynh Ba Commune Party Committee directed the Commune People's Committee to invest in concreting the bottom of the ditches in residential areas with the mechanism of the Commune People's Committee supporting cement, households contributing materials and labor days. In particular, the commune prioritized the solid construction of some main irrigation and drainage ditches in residential areas and in the fields to ensure the drainage of stagnant water. At the same time, it built a waste collection and transportation site for the commune to ensure environmental standards in conjunction with the new rural planning. It organized the establishment of waste collection and transportation teams at the hamlet level. The commune directed hamlets to implement that each house and each household must build a household garbage pit and a wastewater settling tank. If raising livestock on a large scale, a biogas tank must be built to ensure hygiene. Households must classify and preliminarily treat waste right at their homes before moving it to the collection site.

When fundamentally solving the problem of waste in residential areas, the Party Committee of Quynh Ba commune has a policy of assigning the People's Committee of the commune to develop a plan to collect and treat all kinds of waste and pesticide packaging in the fields and cemetery areas to solve the situation where people throw away bottles after spraying pesticides in the fields. The commune has a plan to build 50 garbage pits in the fields to collect pesticide packaging. After each pest control period, the collection team collects and each household pays a fee of 15,000 VND. From a locality that has been "painful" about environmental pollution for many years, Quynh Ba has become a locality with a clean, green, and beautiful environment, the commune meets the environmental criteria in the new countryside.

Talking to us, Quynh Ba Commune Party Secretary Nguyen Thanh Tung shared: "The issue that local authorities and Party committees have been struggling with for decades has been resolved. However, the locality has determined that it is necessary to continue to focus on leading and directing this work, because environmental sanitation work requires regular and continuous implementation. The important thing is that people's awareness has been raised, each person builds awareness to protect the health of themselves, their families and the community."

Thanh Le