Nhiêu Lộc – Thị Nghè Canal — Ho Chi Minh City's World Bank–Financed Waterway Revival

By the 1990s, the Nhiêu Lộc–Thị Nghè canal running through five districts of Ho Chi Minh City had become a heavily polluted, sewage-choked waterway lined with informal housing, contributing to chronic urban flooding in surrounding neighbourhoods.
An initial phase of roughly US$120 million began in 1993, followed by a larger World Bank-financed project launched in 2002 (funded with over VND 8.6 trillion, about US$374 million) that dredged roughly 1.1 million tons of contaminated mud from the nearly 9 km canal, built sewer interceptors to stop raw wastewater discharge, and relocated more than 7,000 households (about 50,000 people) with compensation under World Bank resettlement-safeguard procedures.
The canal, once described locally as 'dead', now supports improved water flow, reduced flood risk in surrounding districts, and waterfront parks used for recreation, culture and waterway tourism; the city has continued the same model on other canals, including Tàu Hủ–Bến Nghé and, more recently, the Xuyên Tâm and Đôi canals.
Published sources document dredging volumes, project cost and resettlement scale in detail, but do not report independently measured water-quality indicators (e.g., BOD or dissolved oxygen) or biodiversity outcomes, so ecological recovery cannot be quantified from available evidence.

Read the full analysis: https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/canal-revival-breathes-life-back-into-hcmc-4270518.html