A well in southern Taiwan has been contaminated with a suspected carcinogen in the latest environmental catastrophe to hit the country.
Residents living within 2km of a well in Kaohsiung County's Taliao township (
TCE is a common industrial solvent, often used to degrease metal objects and as a detergent in the dry-cleaning process.
"We are not sure if the source of the pollutant was factories nearby or an illegal waste dump located about 1km away," EPA head Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said.
The waste dump mentioned by Hau is a site near Red Shrimp Hill (
The contaminated well has been used by the local residents of Chaoming village (昭明村) in Taliao for years, and is used for the irrigation of vegetable crops and during the worship of the village's deity, which is housed in a nearby temple.
According to the EPA, the concentrations of TCE found in samples from the well were 50 to 80 times higher than the permitted standard for drinking water.
The discovery, however, comes months after earlier warnings.
DPP Legislator Hsu Chih-ming (
Hsu requested the EPA take emergency measures to prevent a tragedy occurring, estimating at the time that a cleanup operation to remove the leaking barrels of waste could cost millions of NT dollars.
Under pressure from the legislature, the EPA appropriated NT$3 million for carrying out leakage prevention measures and erect fencing around the site, but it did not remove the waste.
The EPA has yet to identify all the chemical compounds contained in the barrels discovered at the site.
It then listed the site together with other illegal dumps as areas which could threaten nearby residents.
Leu Horng-guang (
"We used infrared and electromagnetic measurements to detect the iron barrels buried deep underground," Leu said, adding that a cleanup project would be outlined by the local environmental protection department by June 10.
The Kaohsiung County Government has asked for help from the EPA to hasten the cleanup work, fearing heavy rains in the summer months might exacerbate the situation.
Cleaning up a reported 170 illegal dumps around the country has been one of the EPA's biggest challenges. Due to a lack of money and manpower, the EPA says it has only carried out preliminary investigations at 60 sites to identify the components of the waste stored at them.
Fourteen out of the 60 sites, located predominantly in southern Taiwan, have been identified as highly dangerous to residents -- among them the site near Red Shrimp Hill.
The EPA's Hau said yesterday that the principal reason behind the decades-old practice of illegal dumping of toxic substances in Taiwan was because the country lacked an official repository for hazardous industrial waste.
Hau said that the EPA had chosen a 150-hectare site in southern Taiwan as the final repository for hazardous industrial waste and that the proposal was sent to the Executive Yuan last month for approval.
The EPA plans begin using the repository in April 2002.
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