Ho Chi Minh City’s iconic canal filled with dead fish after downpour

The 8.7-km canal, running through five districts and receiving a facelift in 2012, is now full of floating bodies of the dead fish, while locals stand in crowds along its sides to see the unprecedented incident out of curiosity.

The canal part that runs from the Kieu Bridge to the Cong Ly Bridge in District 3 has the biggest number of dead fish. The aquatic animals already started to stink and decompose.

Most of the dead fish were cichlids and carp.

On Tuesday, competent agencies have sent three canoes to travel along the canal to pick up the dead fish and spray chemicals to disinfect the water.

Fish deaths tend to happen in Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe following such rainfall, as dirty water from sewage would pour into the canal along with rainwater. A downpour was recorded in several areas of Ho Chi Minh City at around 3:50 pm on Monday, ending the heat wave that had scorched the city for months.

However, Tran Dinh Vinh, head of the agency in charge of inspecting water quality in Ho Chi Minh City, said another reason is that the canal water has been tainted with pollutants.

“We are testing the effect of disinfecting the canal with chemicals in some of the most contaminated areas,” he told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper. “If it works, we will propose doing so for the whole canal.”

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 meant to revamp the canal and its surroundings was initiated in 2002, with its first phase wrapping up in August 2012.

While the canal has been successfully revitalized, it appears to be a much more difficult task to change people’s mindset so as not to dump trash into the water.

The municipal Department of Natural Resources and Environment said in October 2015 that five to 14 metric tons of garbage was dumped into the canal on a daily basis, making Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe one of the channels that contain the most trash in the city.