Illegal waste dump found in Taichung

Prosecutors and Environmental Protection Administration officials yesterday discovered over 100,000 barrels contaminated with toxic chemical waste at the site of an illegal dump in central Taiwan.

The dumped waste, officials said, may have seriously polluted the soil where it was dumped and may have contaminated a nearby river.

Prosecutor Wu Wen-chung (吳文忠) a member of the Black Gold Investigation Center, and more than 60 policemen, prosecutors and environmental officials, investigated several illegal dump sites in central Taiwan yesterday.

When prosecutors arrived at a site in Wuji township (烏日鄉), Taichung County, some local and foreign workers hired by Ho Hsing Barrel Co (合興桶業公司) were caught rinsing contaminated barrels used for toxic chemical solvents. They were immediately arrested.

"The workers had used groundwater to rinse used barrels and had discharged contaminated waste water directly into the Tatu River (大肚溪)," Wu said.

Prosecutors said that they had subpoenaed and interrogated 11 workers, accountants and drivers, and that soon they would subpoena and interrogate Tsai Fa-tzu (蔡法次), the head of Ho Hsing.

The site where the workers were caught dumping the waste, which reeked of toxic pollutants, is along the Tatu River, one of the main rivers in central Taiwan.

According to the EPA's record of licensed waste handlers, the company was licensed in February this year to handle 7,000 non-hazardous waste barrels used by chemical companies each month.

EPA officials, however, said that the company was only allowed to transfer such barrels to factories for recycling under their existing license.

"It's illegal for the company to rinse [the barrels], not to mention dump waste water," Hung Yi-yung (洪義勇), an official from the EPA's Central Region Branch Inspection Bureau, told the Taipei Times.

Hung said that from observations at the site, it had been polluted for years by corrosive chemicals, which had made the color of the soil very dark.

Hung said that toxic chemical solvents, including potassium hydroxide (氫氧化鉀), silica (二氧化矽) and hydrofluoric acid (氫氟酸) might have come from hospitals, battery factories and other chemical companies in central Taiwan.

Companies involved, Hung said, had violated the Waste Disposal Act, the Toxic Chemical Substances Control Act, pollution control acts, and even the criminal law.

Prosecutors demanded yesterday to close and isolate the site for the sake of safety because a residential area is located only 200m away. A further chemical analysis of solvents discovered at the site would be carried out by environmental officials as soon as possible.

Prosecutors suspected that such hazardous chemical solvents, strong acids and alkalis, might have a direct link to the sudden death of a large number of fish near the mouth of the Tatu River in May.

Environmental officials said that they had previously discovered several cases in Wuji which involved the illegal disposal of hazardous chemical waste.

The most recent toxic dumping case uncovered by officials was in July of this year.

In that incident, illegal dumping of toxic waste into the Kaoping River (高屏溪) in southern Taiwan, left 3 million residents in and around Kaohsiung without drinking water for five days.