The restoration of Hanoi’s seriously polluted rivers cannot be carried out overnight and it will require strong financial resources, Dr. Le Dang Doanh, former head of the Central Institute for Economic Management, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Sunday.

Earlier, the Hanoi People’s Committee said it would assign the Department of Natural Resources and Environment to conduct a project to improve the environmental quality in and develop the system of four inner-city rivers: To Lich, Kim Nguu, Lu, and Set.

Commenting on the project, Doanh said multiple seminars and conferences had been held to discuss solutions to the issues of tainted rivers in the capital but they seemed fruitless.

The city should call for private resources and capital from international organizations for the project as well as learn from their experience in tackling environmental pollution, Doanh added.

“It is necessary to invest in infrastructure, including wastewater collection and treatment systems, to deal with the environmental pollution in rivers," he said.

"Wastewater must be treated before being released to the rivers.”

The water levels in rivers in Hanoi tend to fall during the dry season, so the city should develop a system to pump water from large rivers into polluted ones.

This job requires a huge investment, Doanh noted.

The Vietnamese capital city should also call on residents living along rivers to comply with regulations on environmental protection, specifically not littering and encroaching on riverbanks.

Meanwhile, Associate Professor Dao Trong Tu from the center for sustainable development of water resources and adaptation to climate change told Tuoi Tre that Hanoi should build mobile pumping stations to pave the way for the water flow in polluted rivers.

To recover contaminated rivers, the control and treatment of sources of waste and wastewater are a must, Tu noted, adding that if the wastewater continues flowing into the rivers in the inner-city area, the resultant pollution will become worse.

Earlier, Chau Tran Vinh, head of the Department of Water Resources Management under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, said ensuring the continuous water flow in rivers is a solution to their recovery.

The state should also consider building dams in the Red and Duong Rivers to allow water to run into the tainted Day and Nhue Rivers.

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