Devex: USAID begins new round of Agent Orange cleanup in Vietnam
“…Bien Hoa Air Base was the primary Agent Orange storage and handling site during the war and is the largest remaining hot spot of dioxin contamination in Vietnam — and, arguably, in the entire world. … In December, almost 45 years after the end of the war in 1975, the United States Agency for International Development announced that it had launched dioxin cleanup operations at the air base and signed an agreement to implement a $65 million program to support people with disabilities in Vietnam. The operation follows a similar cleanup undertaken at the former Danang air base in 2012, which cost $110 million and took six years to complete. For the remediation project in Bien Hoa — expected to cost $300 million over a 10-year period — USAID will rely on lessons learned in Danang…” (Byatnal, 1/8).