The canal water was killing their rice seeds.
“There are more than 40 distilleries throughout the country producing overproof alcohol, but only a few have begun installing this biological treatment system,” said U Nay Win, secretary of Green Images Myanmar, an environmental group focusing on wastewater management.
Win Brothers Holding Myanmar is one of the few private businesses to have installed biological treatment systems in its distilleries; the Shwe Min Pyan plant established in Mandalay in 1992 and the Yangon Distillery factory in Yangon’s outer eastern Thaketa Township, established in 2004.
Ko Arkar Phyo, a fisherman born and raised in Samalauk, told Frontier that fish numbers have declined in the nearby Pun Hlaing River because of wastewater pollution from the distillery.
He blamed untreated wastewater for the skin disorders he began suffering after the distillery went into operation.
Following a campaign by the village community that had the support of regional MPs, the Ayeyarwady Region government recently ordered the distillery to suspend operations until it installed a biological treatment plant.
Arkar Phyo said that since the distillery had suspended operations many fish have already come back.