The Ho Chi Minh City administration might have successfully revitalized the Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe from a dead canal to one of its new icons, but it is a much more difficult task to change people’s mindset to not dump trash into the waters.

The 8.7-km canal, running through five districts and which received a facelift in 2012, now suffers from five to 14 tons of garbage dumped on a daily basis, according to the municipal Department of Natural Resources and Environment.

Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe has become one of the canals that contain the most trash in the city, despite a huge investment of hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars spent to revitalize what used to be a dead, heavily polluted canal.

The Department of Natural Resources and Environment has thus called on the city’s administration to allow an urban environmental firm to increase the frequency of the trash cleaning service on the canal from once every two days to once every day.

The Ho Chi Minh City Urban Environment Co., Ltd. now has 20 boats in charge of picking up trash on the canal every two days, but the work must be done more frequently in order to deal with such a huge amount of garbage, according to the department.

The company would just fail to clean the canal as trash can be spotted anywhere, from amid the canal to beneath the bridges crossing over it.

Most of the trash is dumped directly by local residents, and eateries or restaurants located along the two sides of the canal, according to the environment department.

The canal is also hit by illegal fishing and public urination, as there is also a dearth of public restroom along its sides.

The Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe Canal snakes through District 1, District 3, Phu Nhuan District, Binh Thanh District and Tan Binh District.

Its pollution plague began after 1954 and lingered well into the 1960s. A project to revamp the canal and its surroundings was thus given high priority attention.

The first phase of the project, starting in 2002 and which focused on revamping the canal and its neighborhood, wrapped up in August 2012.

The facelift was at first estimated to cost US$199.96 million, funded by the World Bank, according to The Saigon Times Online. However, by 2010 the cost had risen to $316.79 million due to tardy implementation progress.

The second phase of the project, including the construction of a wastewater treatment plant, began in March this year.

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