Environmentalists urged the Environmental Protection Admin-istration (EPA) yesterday not to process Kaohsiung County-based Eternal Chemical Company's (
The company, which is located in Luchu (
The pollution left three million residents downstream in metropolitan Kaohsiung short of water.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
Dozens of environmentalists from the Green Formosa Front (GFF, 台灣綠色陣線) yesterday protested in front of the EPA building, urging the EPA to stop processing paperwork submitted by the environmental protection department of the Kaohsiung County Government for the resumption of the operations of Eternal's plant.
Holding a huge mirror, which they called a "monster-reflecting mirror (
"The EPA should have acted like this mirror, which can reflect the evil actions of dishonest monster-like chemical companies," said Hsiao Yu-pei (
Environmentalists said that the EPA had no reason to allow Eternal to resume its operations because problems regarding the lack of waste handlers had still not be dealt with.
"Who is to treat this waste in the future and where is it to go? The EPA should trace all waste generated by the chemical company, instead of letting it continue producing more of the stuff," Yu said, adding that the EPA should have made solving the existing problems its top priority.
Activists said that the water pollution incident exposed in Kaohsiung on July 14 was only the tip of the iceberg pointing out that the disaster was followed by another dioxin pollution case, which was discovered at another of Eternal's plants, located in the Tafa Industrial Complex (
When meeting with protesters yesterday, deputy EPA administrator Lin Ta-hsiung (
"But we will supervise local environmental officials to ensure they evaluate the application carefully," Lin said.
Lin said that the EPA would ask Eternal to provide detailed information regarding the total amount of different types of waste it would generate.
Lin added that prosecutors were still investigating all the waste Eternal generated in the past.
Moreover, environmentalists criticized the EPA for failing to monitor industrial waste, adding that the EPA was easily hoodwinked by dishonest companies, who report the amount of waste they generate through an online declaration system.
EPA officials said that since the Kaohsiung water pollution accident happened last month, they had reviewed the posted records of many companies, especially the biggest 1,000 publicly traded companies.
"The EPA has adopted US regulations to manage industrial waste, but why does it always have the hood pulled over its eyes?" said Joyce Fu (
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