In early 2006 a Japanese couple surnamed Nakamura decided to leave Taiwan earlier than planned. They had participated in the Tourism Bureau’s long-stay tourism program in Puli, Nantou County, but in the end the sheer amount of poop on the pavement was too much for the couple. The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) initiated a “War on Dog Droppings,” and dog owners were to be fined anywhere between NT$1,200 and NT$6,000 for not picking up their dog’s mess.
Late last year, the EPA also considered fining pedestrians or motorcycle riders for smoking on the streets — again anything in the range of NT$1,200 to NT$6,000 — depending on the severity of the offense. One telephone call from someone high up in a certain political party, however, silenced that idea. Whether or not you see this as an example of how the “party leads the government” is up to you, but the point is there are more pressing issues with regards to Taiwan’s environment.
Why have people started becoming suspicious of locally produced food? Why was the idea of importing US beef such a contentious issue? Toxins enter the body through the air, water or indirectly through food, accumulate over time and cause health issues at some indeterminate time in the future. This is general knowledge. The best thing to do is to cut down, as much as possible, our exposure to these toxins.
The incidence of asthma and bronchitis among schoolchildren is increasing. The EPA blames the rise on an increasingly affluent society, with all kinds of chemical solvents being used in new construction materials and modern interiors. If this is true, why doesn’t the EPA ban these solvents? The agency is aware that air pollution comes predominantly from coal-fired power stations, steel refineries and petrochemical processes. Taiwan has one of the largest power stations in the world: the Taichung Power Plant. What about the people who live nearby? And why resuscitate plans to construct the Changkung thermal power plant 15kms away?
Large power stations are responsible for more than half of the sulfur and nitrogen oxide effluents produced in Taiwan. The US Environmental Protection Agency says, coal-fired power stations and incinerators are the major source of mercury pollutants in the environment. Did Taiwan’s EPA ever think about a way to handle mercury pollutants? It may well be the case that mercury and other heavy metals are captured in dust traps before they are released into the environment, but the dust still finds it way into the land and is absorbed by bodies of water. It is dangerous to have toxic substances entering our ditches, rivers, and lakes.
The EPA has carried out a number of environmental tests, although these are rarely made available to the public. After the Formosa Plastics Group’s sixth naphtha cracker was built, local residents started complaining about a change in air quality. When it was really bad, they said, they had to send their children to school wearing face masks.
The EPA’s west Taiwan ambient air monitoring station in Yunlin, as of April 2007, was getting readings of 52 types of organic elements in the air, in addition to the normal pollutants one would usually expect. When the wind was blowing in the “right” direction, there was apparently a sharp increase in the levels of these pollutants. We cannot afford to allow an expansion of the plant, the addition of an eighth cracker plant, or a large steel works?
The EPA has failed to keep an eye on the toxic chemical agents used in the nation’s high-tech development over the years. The science parks’ own environmental impact assessment committees have detailed lists of the agents used, but these somehow all pass muster in the environmental assessments.
Tests in the past have revealed a significant deterioration in air quality in the areas surrounding the Hsinchu Science Park in northern Taiwan and the Central Taiwan Science Park. The tests found arsenic concentrations of more than one part per 1,000. Both the EPA and the National Science Council carried out tests around flue terminals, but these were not spot checks. The results were that “the concentrations fell within the acceptable limits.” Acceptable to whom?
Many science parks tend to be built in areas around cities, considered preferable environments to the large, long-abandoned industrial zones along the coasts. This not only annoys the locals, it is also a cause for alarm for people living in the surrounding areas. Fish die in water polluted by industrial waste that the EPA has passed as falling within its standards. Does this water find its way into irrigation channels? Who is going to buy livestock raised downstream from these areas? Crop yields fall because of poor water quality, but how are you expected to make a living if you don’t plant the crop next time around?
Annual household waste has fallen from 9 million tonnes a decade ago to 8 million tonnes today, but industrial waste actually rose from 10.7 million tonnes in 2001 to 16.79 million tonnes in just five years. The amount of toxic waste increased at a quicker rate — and that is just the declared waste. So where did all the undeclared industrial waste go?
We have a long list of known cases where companies were caught with their pants down, throughout southern, central and northern Taiwan: Formosa Plastics dumping mercury waste at Camel Hill near Kaohsiung’s Linyuan Township (林園鄉); the RCA plant near Taoyuan polluting groundwater with toxic waste; the Sanying Bridge (三鶯橋) in Taipei County being used as a dumping ground for barrels of chemicals, some leaking by the time they were found; and then there was dumping in the Laonong River (荖濃溪) and Dashu Township (大樹鄉), to name a few.
You would think, wouldn’t you, that problems like this would be more pressing than removing smokers and poop from the streets.
Gloria Hsu is a member of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Union and a professor in National Taiwan University’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
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