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A soil quarry in Xuan Loc District of Dong Nai Province is being mined to supply to Phan Thiet – Dau Giay project |
Phan Thiet – Dau Giay Expressway project is allocated 2.1 million cubic meters of ground filling materials for all sections. However, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, adverse weather, and material scarcity, this project is seriously behind schedule. It now needs 620,000m3 to serve the construction of parallel roads, collector roads for residential areas, approach roads to overpasses.
Similarly, Ring Road No.3 – HCMC (passing HCMC, the provinces of Binh Duong, Dong Nai, and Long An) requires 1.6 million m3 of soil and 7.2 million m3 of sand for ground filling; 4.4 million m3 of stones and 1.5 million m3 of sand for construction. Sadly, the available amount can only satisfy half of this request.
The first stage of Bien Hoa – Vung Tau Expressway project, with a total initial capital of over VND6 trillion (US$255 million) from state budget, is trying to finish its land clearance task now and will need ground filling material as well.
Aware of such a high demand from various projects, Dong Nai Province has planned to use its 12 quarries with a reserve of 204 million m3 and some soil quarries, but the situation does not seem at all brighten.
The Mekong Delta is now launching eight expressway construction projects and five road expansion, improvement ones (the Can Tho – Ca Mau Section of the North-South Expressway, Cao Lanh – An Huu Expressway, My An – Cao Lanh Expressway) with a total investment amount of VND112.6 trillion ($4.8 billion).
By 2025, these projects will have asked for more than 47.8 million m3 of sand. Although the Transport Ministry has already asked that the provinces of An Giang, Dong Thap, and Vinh Long increase the exploitation capacity of local sand quarries to distribute sufficient sand for these major projects, the potential of material insufficiency is rather high.
To urgently address this issue, the Transport Ministry proposed that the Government direct the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry to provide instruction to localities on the procedures to mine minerals for construction materials to serve traffic projects. Simultaneously, it is necessary to research the feasibility of using sea sand for ground filling tasks.
Particularly, the sand supply for Ring Road No.3 project is severely scarce, so the provinces of An Giang, Dong Thap, Vinh Long should consider increasing the exploitation of current quarries as well as opening new ones to answer that need.
Meanwhile, the People’s Committees of related cities and provinces must actively prepare necessary procedures within their power for material mine exploitation in order to give to material mining contractors when needed to keep up with the assigned construction progress by the Government.
Classifying key traffic projects, especially expressway construction ones, are of national top-priority, Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha has lately requested that any provinces owning sand quarries actively increase the exploitation capacity by 50 percent and soil, stone quarries by 200 percent.
The quarries that are temporarily closed should be reviewed to resume operation with strict monitoring on environment impacts so as to supply materials for key projects, including the North-South Expressway. New quarries should have an environment impact report prepared before being exploited, and must close immediately after those projects finish.
As to studying the feasibility of using sea sand to replace normal sand in traffic projects, the Deputy Prime Minister directed that there must be careful evaluation on whether the quality of the former for expressway construction is the same as the latter or not. The Transport Ministry is asked to cooperate with the Construction Ministry to review and re-evaluate the standard design of expressways.
