The US launched on Saturday a
$183 million clean-up at a former Vietnam storage site for Agent Orange, a
toxic defoliant used in their bitter war which years later is still blamed for
severe birth defects, cancers and disabilities.
Located outside Ho Chi Minh
City, Bien Hoa airbase — the latest site scheduled for rehabilitation after
Danang airbase’s clean-up last year — was one of the main storage grounds for
Agent Orange and only hastily cleared by soldiers near the war’s end more than
four decades ago.
US forces sprayed 80 million
litres (21 million gallons) of Agent Orange over South Vietnam between 1962 and
1971 in a desperate bid to flush out Viet Cong communist guerrillas by
depriving them of tree cover and food.
The spillover from the
clearing operation is believed to have seeped beyond the base and into ground
water and rivers, and is linked to severe mental and physical disabilities
across generations of Vietnamese — from enlarged heads to deformed limbs.
At Bien Hoa, more than 500,000
cubic metres of dioxin had contaminated the soil and sediment, making it the
“largest remaining hotspot” in Vietnam, said a statement from the US
development agency USAID, which kicked off a 10-year remediation effort on Saturday.
The dioxin amounts in Bien Hoa
are four times more than the volume cleaned up at Danang airport, a six-year
$110 million effort which was completed in November.
“The fact that two former foes are now
partnering on such a complex task is nothing short of historic,” said the US
ambassador to Vietnam, Daniel Kritenbrink, at Saturday morning’s launch
attended by Vietnamese military officials and US senators.
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