American and Vietnamese personnel have removed dioxin from an area of 5,300 square meters at Bien Hoa airport, the most contaminated spot in Vietnam.
The remediation work which began
in December 2019 removed 1,134 cubic meters of dioxin-contaminated sediments
from Gate 2 Lake within the airport in Dong Nai Province, an hour’s drive from
HCMC.
Bien Hoa airport was the largest
U.S. military base in Vietnam during the war and is now used for military
training.
The remediated area will be handed
over to local authorities in the next few days.
At an event held at the airport on
Wednesday to announce the results of one year of work, the Air Defense Air
Force Command signed an agreement with the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) to hand over an area of 7.2 hectares at the airbase for the
latter to decontaminate over the next two years.
The two nations' governments have
agreed that some 515,000 cubic meters of soil on 52.24 hectares at the airport
is contaminated with dioxin, a deadly chemical used in the defoliant Agent
Orange by the U.S.
Cleaning it up is expected to take
at least 10 years and cost the two countries $300 million each.
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