Many rivers in the central region are overflowing and causing floods as rampant mining of sand has from stripped their banks clean.
The 15-kilometer-long Tuy Loan River in Da Nang, for instance, sees tens of boats equipped with pumps sailing up and down daily to illegally exploit sand.
They berth one after another between 2am and 2pm to set up the pumps on the banks and extract sand.
There are dozens of illegal mines along just one kilometer of the river and many craters.
Le Thi Lan, who owns a vegetable farm near the river, said the river has encroached deeply into the land. If authorities fail to do act, there will be no land left by the end of this year to grow vegetables.
People living on Mo Coi hillock in Quang Nam Province’s Dien Ban District said dozens of boats come every night to take away sand, causing landslides.
According to the Dien Phong Commune Farmers Association, some 40 hectares of land in the commune have been lost to encroachment by the river, lands that once supported many families.
Triem Tay hamlet in the commune lost tens of hectares, forcing over 20 households to move.
More than 30 boats come every day to this area to take away thousands of cubic meters of sand.
Ninety out of 125 families have moved out of Vinh Thanh hamlet due to landslides.
In Quang Ngai Province the Tra Khuc River’s vicinity looks like a war zone with a huge number of boats mining sand from dunes.
In Quang Ngai town, dozens of trucks line up early morning every day in Le Hong Phong ward to mine sand from dunes.
Natural resources stolen
The People’s Committee of Hoa Nhon Commune in Da Nang, established a team equipped with a boat to patrol dunes and detect illegal miners earlier this year.
However, due to a shortage of personnel and limited powers, the team cannot arrest illegal miners but only impose fines of up to VND1.5 million.
As a result, the illegal exploitation continues.
Nguyen Dang Du, chairman of the committee, said his commune has lost three hectares of farmland in less than a year to the mining and admitted his administration’s helplessness to do anything.
The Department of Natural Resources and Environment in Quang Ngai said the province People’s Committee plans to auction away the right to mine sand along the Tra River.
In recent years, after every flood season, many landslides occur along the river.
The central region is in chaos -- illegal sand miners are everywhere, river banks and nearby lands are being eroded, people are losing their farmlands, and official agencies are unable to do anything to prevent all this.
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