Groundwater pollution by longstanding cemetery and solutions for urban cemetery planning in Ho Chi Minh City - From reality to solutions

Abstract

The fast speed of urbanization in Vietnamese big city like Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) has pushed a large number of longstanding cemeteries deep into the inner city. It consequently leads to the gradual loss of urban aesthetics and negative impacts on urban environment. Choosing location for cemetery in modernized city is currently realized as one of serious and difficult issues in terms of urban space planning. Also, it is an urgent concern of environmental problem. The result of traditional inhumation, for example, has led to an uncontrollable wide underground spread of polluted leachates exuding from human body corpses in longstanding cemetery and surrounding areas. In order to improve the effectiveness of urban planning, together with environmental and cemetery management and groundwater conservation responsibilities on site and surroundings of a cemetery, assessment of the groundwater pollution and simulation of the contaminant transport potential are compulsory. This study aims to conduct both tasks into Binh Hung Hoa (Tan Phu district) and Vinh Nghiem (district 12) cemeteries, the two typical longstanding cemeteries in HCMC.