Ho Chi Minh City will soon develop 30 lakes in suburban areas andhundreds of others in inner-city areas to hold rainwater in a move toeffectively control severe floods, said the Saigon Times Daily.

DoTan Long, head of the Irrigation Management Office of the HCM CitySteering Centre of the Urban Flood Control Programme, told the Dailythat the centre is planning to send the city People’s Committee aproject to build reservoirs to help cope with flooding in the city bythe second quarter.

According to the project, 30 large lakes willbe built on the outskirts while due to the lack of land, the areas inthe inner-city will have smaller lakes located in residential areas,sidewalks, school campuses and large buildings.

With the ongoingclimate change and the increasing rainfall, building lakes for holdingwater is a sound solution to deal with the overload of the drainagesystems when heavy rain comes along with flood tides, causing floods inthe city, Long said.

The city will use its budget to build large lakes and raise funds from residents for smaller ones, he said.

HoLong Phi, senior advisor and project manager of the Steering Centre ofFlood Control of the city, said when the lakes are finished and put intouse, they can store tens of millions of cubic meters of rainwater andhelp reduce floods by around 30%.

The proposal for building lakesto control floods in the city was passed by the city’s Party Committeethree years ago but the project has yet to be carried out, Le Thanh Hai,secretary of the city’s Party Committee, told a Party meeting lastweek.

The city’s People Committee said for the last three yearssome big flooding control projects with a total investment of some 1.58trillion VND (74.8 million USD) have been commissioned.

Theyinclude the tide control sewer Nhieu Loc – Thi Nghe in Binh Thanhdistrict, 335 kilometres of drainage systems and 1,077 sluice gates tocontrol flood tides around the city.-VNA