FACEBOOK
TWITTER
Agent Orange cleanup to start at former US base in Vietnam
HANOI (AFP) – Vietnam and the United States aim to start cleaning up contamination from Agent Orange at a former wartime US base in the middle of next year, the US embassy said Thursday.
A memorandum signed between the two sides “confirms the mutual desire of both governments to cooperate in hopes that cleanup can begin in July 2011 and be completed in October 2013,” the statement said.
The agreement covers contamination at the Danang airport in central Vietnam.
During the Vietnam War US aircraft flying from bases including Danang sprayed Agent Orange and other herbicides to strip trees of foliage, in a bid to deprive communist forces of cover and food.
The herbicides contained potentially cancer-causing dioxin.
In preparation for the cleanup, the US awarded a contract late last year for building a secure landfill site to hold contaminated soil and sediment at the airport, where the US is focusing its help at Vietnam’s request.
US ambassador Michael Michalak told the signing ceremony on Thursday that Washington has set aside almost 17 million dollars this year for the Danang dioxin cleanup, which will cost a total of 34 million dollars.
“The two governments are now jointly preparing for the design, procurement and implementation of the project,” he said.
Experts have identified two other former US air bases as “hot spots” of dioxin contamination.
The UN this year announced a five-million-dollar project to reduce contamination at the Bien Hoa airport hot spot near Ho Chi Minh City.
A Vietnamese doctor testified before the US Congress this year that more than three million Vietnamese have suffered the effects of wartime herbicides.
Vietnam and the US normalised relations 15 years ago.
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=70413
Posted by Chuck Palazzo on Jan 1 2011, With 0 Reads, Filed under Agent Orange, Causes, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
COMMENTS
To post, we ask that you login using Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail in the box below.Don't have a social network account? Register and Login direct with VT and post.
Before you post, read our Comment Policy - Feedback
too bad GUAM didn’t get any cleanup that everyone knew about with 19,000 ppm in the soil there from me handspraying it there for ten years…..and thousands of vets and american children ill or dead and thousands of unborn children miscarried or still births from it and birth defects know one wants to talk about
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Betsy Orr Metz and others. Betsy Orr Metz said: Agent Orange cleanup to start at former US base in Vietnam http://j.mp/gTtZWK [...]
It is nice to start New Year with something positive and necessary. I hope some day they will get to the war that never was in Laos by the Plains of Jars and clean up the mines so they can cultivate again. I made a Christmas picture once of this little tribal girl by the trail to the Vietnam border as she was standing by a big, unexploded bombs they used as fences.
Happy New Year Gordon and all of you. I think we may be the few that can still see reality in this environment of make believes we now live in. We need to wake up the citizens. They need to know becoming a Congress Member does not make a Leader or a expert at any thing, most are not. Electing a party leader means that he/she knows how to lead the Party not the Nation. Does any one remember, it was in the news, when Bush asked Hollywood to prepare a training manual for him because they were so realistic and he needed to learn because he was going to be a War President.
Not a joke.
After my visit, last year at this time, to Vietnam after 42 years all I can say is IT IS ABOUT TIME. Having visited some places from long ago in the Que Son Valley I felt ashamed for what IU had done (still do).
I can see that at sometime in the future, long after this old dog face is finally gone,this same kind of story being told of some other place that the US has FUBAR’d.
A better New Year to all,
D. Tracy
Congrats on the agreements and funding. Now comes the fun part > planning, gathering the right equipment, training the labor force and proper disposal.
This could very well become a pilot program for the PRVN AND the US when it comes to
dioxin removal.