Today, the environmental degradation is obvious, but even more devastating is the still-present danger of old landmines, many still active. When the rains come, the land erodes and floods, and these mines shift and move. Some come to the surface, others are hidden in shallow graves of dirt. Some lodge against buildings or among rocks. Even today, one child per week gets seriously injured or dies in Quang Tri as the result of an old landmine.
Rice fields remain too dangerous to till.
Slow progress toward restoration has been made in the larger cities. In the rural provinces, well-meaning organizations and governmental programs promise help, but little help arrives. One couple, Danaan Parry, the founder of the nonprofit Earthstewards Network, and his wife Jerilyn Brusseau, whose brother was killed in the Vietnam War, decided to do something. Shortly after President Clinton normalized relations with Vietnam in July 1995, the two traveled to Hanoi. This site had been a US Marine base and the scene of some of the fiercest battles of the war.