Proactively prevent and be ready to respond when waste incidents occur.

Ensure safety measures for waste incident response forces and people in areas affected by waste incidents.

This Regulation regulates the response to waste incidents occurring in production, business and service activities, including: Incident response preparation; incident response organization; environmental remediation and restoration after incidents; environmental response and restoration support mechanisms, community participation and responsibilities of relevant agencies, organizations and individuals. This Regulation does not regulate waste incidents occurring at sea. Response to waste incidents occurring at sea is carried out in accordance with legal provisions on response to toxic chemical incidents, response to oil spill incidents and other relevant legal provisions.

Ensuring safety for people in areas affected by waste incidents

The Decision clearly states that a waste incident is an environmental incident caused by leakage, spillage, or dispersion of waste during the process of generation, collection, storage, transit, transportation, preliminary processing, treatment, co-treatment, recycling, energy recovery, and waste destruction.

Waste incidents are classified according to the classification of environmental incidents prescribed in Article 123 of the Law on Environmental Protection, including: a) Grassroots-level waste incidents; b) District-level waste incidents; c) Provincial-level waste incidents; d) National-level waste incidents.

The principle of responding to waste incidents is to proactively prevent, proactively develop plans, prepare resources, and coordinate solutions to be ready to respond when waste incidents occur;

Organize timely reception and processing of waste incident information, prioritize information assurance for response activities, and promptly report to competent authorities when response capacity is exceeded;

Responding to waste incidents is carried out according to the four on-site principles (on-site command; on-site forces; on-site means and materials; on-site logistics) and three readiness principles (proactive prevention, timely response, urgent and effective remediation). Coordinate and mobilize all resources to improve the effectiveness of waste incident preparation and response activities;

Ensure safety measures for waste incident response forces and people in areas affected by waste incidents;

Organizations and individuals causing waste incidents must be responsible for paying the costs of responding to waste incidents, environmental remediation and restoration, compensation for damages and other costs caused by waste incidents, except in cases where the State pays according to the provisions of law.

Responding to waste incidents at the facility

The legal representative of the facility or authorized person is the person in charge of incident response at the facility.

The person in charge of responding to waste incidents at the facility must organize incident response, assess the scope of impact and the facility's self-response capability to carry out the following activities:

In case of an incident within the facility's self-responsibility, the commander is responsible for implementing incident response measures according to the approved plan and scenario; at the same time, he is responsible for reporting to the District Civil Defense Command and the Commune People's Committee on incident response within 24 hours from the time of incident detection.

In case the incident is beyond the facility's ability to respond, the commander must immediately notify the People's Committee of the commune level, the Civil Defense Command Committee of the commune where the incident occurs, or the Civil Defense Command Committee of the district level to organize a response; hand over command to the District Civil Defense Command Committee and direct the facility's incident response force to comply with the request of the District Civil Defense Command Committee.

Environmental rehabilitation and restoration after waste incidents

The project owner and the facility causing the waste incident must carry out environmental restoration after the waste incident within the facility. The People's Committee of the commune where the waste incident occurred is responsible for inspecting and supervising environmental restoration activities.

Environmental restoration after waste incidents at district, provincial and national levels is carried out in accordance with the provisions of Clause 2, Article 126 of the Law on Environmental Protection.

Provincial and district-level environmental protection agencies are responsible for advising the People's Committees of the same level in directing the implementation of environmental restoration after waste incidents in the area;

The specialized agencies assigned and assigned tasks by the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment are responsible for advising the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment in directing the organization of environmental restoration after national-level waste incidents.

Environmental rehabilitation and restoration after an incident must ensure compliance with technical standards on the quality of the surrounding environment; restore residential areas, production and business areas, and the natural environment for areas without a preserved ecosystem; restore some key features of the ecosystem for areas with a preserved ecosystem.

This Decision comes into force from June 10, 2025.

Khanh Linh

Source: https://baochinhphu.vn/chu-dong-phong-ngua-san-sang-ung-pho-khi-xay-ra-su-co-chat-thai-102250423180251015.htm