An overview of the drinking water supply situation in the Mekong river delta, Vietnam

The Mekong delta (MD), the most downstream part of the Mekong river (See figure 1), is known as the biggest "rice bowl" of Vietnam. The Delta has a population of 17 million inhabitants living in 4 million hectares of land. All the people living in the Delta have to depend totally on the water resources, mainly the surface water, for domestic drinking, crop irrigating, fish-shrimp raising, goods transporating and industrial producing. As a general rule, any increase in industrial and agricultural activity from upstream may affect to water quality problems more or less in the downstream......