U.S. finances dioxin remediation at Bien Hoa Air Base

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to Viet Nam Marc Knapper, and Deputy Minister of Defense Hoang Xuan Chien attended the announcement ceremony.

This program is a reflection of the U.S.' enduring commitment to Viet Nam as the countries mark 10 years of the U.S.-Viet Nam Comprehensive Partnership.

Under the new contract, Nelson Environmental Remediation USA, an American small business, will design and build a treatment facility to decontaminate soil and sediment on and around the Bien Hoa Air base.

The first phase will treat more than 100,000 cubic meters of the total approximate 500,000 cubic meters of dioxin-contaminated soil and sediment.

The Bien Hoa clean-up project was launched in April 2019 and is expected to take 10 years to complete with a total fund of US$450 million.

The U.S. government's contribution to-date to the Bien Hoa clean-up is US$163.25 million, out of a total expected contribution of US$300 million.

The Bien Hoa clean-up is nearly four times the volume of a previous Da Nang Airport clean-up project which USAID and the Ministry of Defense completed in 2018.

USAID and the Ministry of Defense officials also inaugurated a park at the site of today's ceremony, installed by USAID and Viet Nam's Air Defense Air Force Command (ADAFC) with support from the U.S. Department of Defense, to commemorate this key milestone in U.S.-Viet Nam cooperation.

In a signing ceremony, USAID officially handed over this park land to the Government of Viet Nam, which marks the first decontaminated parcel of Bien Hoa Air Base to be returned to the Ministry of Defense./.