Lam River "swallows" alluvial land, people lose dozens of hectares of production land

Thanh Giang is a purely agricultural commune, people's lives mainly depend on agricultural production. However, in recent years, the agricultural land area in this locality has been gradually shrinking due to the alarming rate of riverbank erosion.

To overcome this situation, local people have used many measures to keep every inch of land such as embankments, embankments, bamboo planting, and reed planting, but they cannot stop the river from "swallowing" the land.

Thanh Giang commune currently has more than 70 hectares of alluvial land along the Lam River. In recent years, the landslide area has stretched for tens of meters. Many places have turned into precarious vertical cliffs 2-3 meters high, each strong wave causes chunks of earth to collapse into the river.

The alluvial land along Lam River in Thanh Giang Commune (Thanh Chuong) suffered major landslides. Photo: Van Ly

Mr. Nguyen Dinh Binh, a resident of Lam Dinh hamlet, Thanh Giang commune, worried: When I was a child, the riverbank was nearly a kilometer away from our house. Now the riverbank is only a few dozen steps away. The people here mainly live on agricultural production, now the land is washed away by water, we are extremely worried.

According to Mr. Tran Huu Sy - Head of the Agriculture Department of Thanh Giang Commune, in recent years, each rainy season, the commune has lost 5 - 10 hectares of land. The cause of that, besides the destruction caused by natural disasters, is also due to the increasing number of ships exploiting sand and gravel on the river...

According to Thanh Giang commune residents, they often see large barges coming here to illegally exploit sand and gravel.

Many sand and gravel suction barges brazenly suck sand and gravel right at the foot of the Lam River bank, causing serious erosion. Photo: Van Ly

Not only Thanh Giang commune, according to the leaders of Thanh Yen commune, the whole commune currently has 80 hectares of alluvial land along the Lam River and after the recent flood, about 24 hectares have been eroded. Thanh Ha commune also suffered a landslide of nearly 10 hectares. The risk of farmers along the alluvial land losing all their productive land is almost real...