A ceramic tile manufacturer in southern Vietnam has been discovered dumping raw, black sewage into a river.

Vietnam’s Bureau of Environmental Crimes on Monday said it had just caught Pak Vietnam Single-Member LLC, located in Dong Nai Province, in the act of discharging untreated waste into the environment.

According to its business license, the company is specialized in manufacturing ceramic tiles and selling construction materials.

At the company’s factory in Phuoc Binh Commune, Long Thanh District, black, putrid sewage could be seen coming out of its drainage system into the nearby hamlet of Phuoc Hung.

The wastewater continued through the My Xuan B1 industrial park in neighboring Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province into the Keo Stream, before flowing directly into a seven-kilometer section of the Thi Vai River.

The Thi Vai River snakes 76 kilometers through Ba Ria-Vung Tau and Dong Nai, and is often subject to water pollution from factories based in the latter industry-driven province.

Inside Pak Vietnam’s Dong Nai factory, a coolant bath for one of its coal gasification boilers were dug out of the ground with no partition from tangent soil.

The bath measured 40 meters long, 20 meters wide and 0.5 meters deep.

Another square bath measuring five meters on each side and 0.15 meters deep also had no separation between the thick, black liquid it contained and the tangent natural soil.

One of its coal gasification boilers was in operation.

A water pump was installed at the former coolant bath to pump sewage directly into the environment.

A Pak Vietnam representative said the water pump has a capacity of 1,800 kWh and is used to pump coolant into its warehouse through a ten-meter pipe.

Police officers booked the case and took four samples of the sewage for further lab tests.

Relevant authorities also requested that the company put an immediate end to the dumping of the black, putrid liquid into the environment and had the dumped liquid collected for proper treatment.