Environmental officials in Hsinfeng township (新豐鄉), Hsinchu County, confirmed the existence of a 10-year-old mercury-tainted waste dumping site that has remained hidden for more than 10 years.
Accompanied by environmentalists, Hsinchu County Commissioner Lin Kwang-hua (
"This is disgusting. Some nearby residents still rely on groundwater [for drinking]," Lin said.
PHOTO: HUNG MEI-HSIU, LIBERTY TIMES
The illegal dumping site, covering 140m2 of Hsinfeng township, was discovered by residents living close to the site.
Environmental inspectors collected samples at the waste site yesterday and discovered mercury contaminating both the soil and groundwater.
Residents were terrified by the discovery because they have been drinking groundwater for many years.
"The worst is that water accumulating at the site has run over into nearby fish ponds during the recent heavy rains," one local resident said.
Officials confirmed that the mercury-tainted waste was generated by Miaoli County-based China General Plastics Corporation, but the amount of the waste disposed of is still unknown.
Commissioner Lin ordered environmental officials to contain the runoff in order to prevent further pollution of the groundwater.
Lin added that prosecutors will soon begin an investigation into the illegal dumping.
Environmental specialists from the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a research center in charge of analyzing waste, told the Taipei Times yesterday that they estimate the mercury-tainted waste was about 30cm thick.
Chang Yee-tsan (
"We are currently analyzing about 15m3 of unidentified waste found alongside the contaminated site," Chang said.
CGPC is one of seven plastics companies which once generated mercury-tainted waste. No such waste has been generated since July 1989, when the government prohibited plastics companies from using mercury in their plastics-making processes.
How much mercury-tainted waste still exists is unclear, however, because of the inconsistency of statistics taken by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB).
EPA estimates show that there is currently 30,000 tonnes of mercury-tainted waste in Taiwan but IDB figures show that figure to be 100,000 tonnes.
Formosa Plastics Corporation shipped 2,700 tonnes of mercury-tainted waste to Cambodia in 1998 but succumbed to international pressure and shipped the toxic waste -- along with the soil it contaminated, totalling 4,600 tonnes -- back to Taiwan in 1999.
In the wake of the international scandal, environmentalists criticized the government for its failure in managing hazardous industrial waste and urged the administration to trace existing hazardous industrial waste. Several illegal dump sites were exposed last year.
At a site in Hsinyuan township (新園鄉), Pingtung County, 7,000 tonnes of mercury-tainted waste generated by Formosa Plastics were discovered. That waste has been packed in barrels but is still sitting at the site because no final disposal site has been made available.
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