Mr. Le Van Dong (Thai Nguyen) asked, for the continuous automatic monitoring system, the monitoring results are returned and transmitted to the Department of Natural Resources and Environment continuously every 5 minutes. What results should your company disclose in this case:

(1) Announce the average automatic monitoring results of the previous month?

(2) Announcement of results that automatically change continuously according to the transmitted value of the monitoring station (in this case, the datalogger must be interfered with)?

(3) Publish all monitoring results automatically in 30 days (this option is not feasible because with 5 minutes for 1 time x 6 monitoring parameters, 30 days of monitoring data is 51,840 results), a lot cannot be displayed)?

The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment responded to this issue as follows:

According to the provisions of Point a, Clause 2, Article 102 of Decree No. 08/2022/ND-CP dated January 10, 2022 of the Government detailing a number of articles of the Law on Environmental Protection, companies must disclose monitoring results on the company's website or publicly on the electronic bulletin board located at the company's factory gate.

For the publication of continuous automatic monitoring results (specified in Clause 2, Article 102 of Decree No. 08/2022/ND-CP): Investment project owners, facilities, construction and business owners Infrastructure businesses in concentrated production, business and service zones, industrial clusters subject to automatic and continuous monitoring of industrial wastewater, dust and gas emissions shall publicize monitoring results as soon as they are available, in real time (the monitoring device returns results according to the frequency, then publicize according to that frequency), public data series (displayed on the website or electronic bulletin board) is 30 days or earlier from the time of the final results and continuously updated in real time (not just public for 30 days and then stop doing it).

The data storage at the facility and data transmission to the management agency shall be adjusted in accordance with the provisions of law on monitoring.

According to the provisions of Point dd, Clause 4, Article 97 and Point d, Clause 5, Article 98, the value of wastewater and emission monitoring parameters that need attention is the daily average value (24 hours); for batch discharge, determine the average value per hour, in case of discharge less than 1 hour, determine the average value during that discharge period.

Thus, based on this regulation, the publication of automatic and continuous monitoring results of the unit can be done as follows:

i) For the case of continuous discharge of wastewater, publicize the monitoring value according to the daily average (24 hours) and continuously for 30 days;

ii) For the case of batch discharge of wastewater, the average value shall be announced per hour or the average observed value per batch (if the discharge time for a batch is less than 1 hour).