Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
agencies or from the responsible authorities. Although limited in num-
ber of parameters and frequency of sampling, interested parties can
have access to environmental data. 4 Often, environmental data are
treated as an additional source of income for officials, and off-the-
record payments can result in surprising data sets. There is use of con-
ventional media, but hardly any use of the new media, in making access
more easy and widespread. The exception is the Air Quality Index at
the Web site 5 of the HCMC Environmental Protection Agency (HEPA),
also presented at a large digital bulletin board at the central market in
HCMC, alternated by various commercials. Governmental Web sites
are fragmented in environmental data disclosure, often presenting one-
time environmental quality data on a limited number of parameters.
This all looks still impressive compared to industrial (and other)
emission monitoring. There is no general system of systematic moni-
toring of industrial and other point source emissions by the local gov-
ernments in HoChiMinh City and HaNoi (and certainly not outside the
major urban-industrial nodes). Since early 2004 HEPA is the respon-
sible agency under the HCMC Department of Natural Resources and
Environment DONRE for emission monitoring. Both before HEPA's
establishment and at the moment there is no systematic collection of
data of industrial emissions (e.g. Tran Thi My Dieu et al., 2003 ).
Recently, HEPA started a first attempt to get emission data from the
100 major industrial pollution sources, but only 40 industries reacted
by sending HEPA (some of) their emission data. Overall, reactions
from foreign investors and joint ventures (which are better linked
to the informational highway) were much better than from major
domestic companies. From this a GIS-based data system is under
construction, which is only available and accessible for governmental
4
The HoChiMinh City Environmental Protection Agency (HEPA) did discuss
recently with various local media whether the latter could not publish the
so-called Air Quality Index regularly in their newspapers. These newspapers
refused to do so, using the argument that the data were not reliable enough
(interview HEPA official, October 2005).
5
HEPA presents an air quality index on their Web site
(http://www.hepa.gov.vn/AirOnline), be it with a time lag of some two weeks
because of the need to process raw data and make data more reliable. There is
also opposition from higher echelons, both locally and nationally, against the
(further) environmental disclosure policy of HEPA, limiting HEPA's possibilities
to expand in this direction (interview HEPA official, November 2005).
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