Environmentalists urged the government yesterday to step up its efforts in tackling Taiwan's growing problem of waste management and to prevent the spread of illegal waste sites.
At a press conference held by legislators from the Association of Sustainable Development (
"Based on our experience in interviewing people living near illegal waste dumps in southern Taiwan, we don't think the EPA [Environmental Protection Administration] has managed the cleanup task well because residents were kept from learning updated information about the clean-up," said Li Ken-cheng (
Lee said that it was unfair to local residents who live near the dumps. "People have never been informed by the EPA ... of the environmental deterioration caused by the dumping of toxic chemical materials, which have damaged their health for years," Lee said.
Lee urged the administration to carry out a comprehensive investigation into existing illegal waste dumps and to set up a timeline for resolving the problem.
Some illegal waste depositories are polluted by hazardous industrial waste. The illegal dumping is largely a result of Taiwan's long failure to provide a final depository for such waste.
All that industrial firms can do is store hazardous waste at factories sites or entrust waste handlers, some of whom are illegal, to deal with disposing the waste for them.
According to the administration, Taiwan produces about 18.5 million tonnes of industrial waste annually. Of that waste, administration officials said, 1.5 million tonnes were hazardous.
Due to the lack of depositories for industrial waste, some non-hazardous industrial waste has been sent to public landfills. EPA officials said, however, that about half of public landfills will be full by next year.
Thus both the EPA and the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB,
Leu Horng-guang (呂鴻光), director general of the EPA's Bureau of Solid Waste Management (廢管處) said that the EPA has been working with local governments to build depositories nation-wide.
"By the end of 2003, these depositories will be able to treat more than 10 million tonnes of industrial waste annually," Leu said.
IDB officials said yesterday that several plans for build-operate-transfer projects for building final depositories had been processed.
By the end of 2004, IDB officials said such depositories will treat nearly a million tonnes of hazardous industrial waste.
EPA officials said that Taiwan has shipped hazardous industrial waste to foreign countries since 1993. Hazardous waste includes industrial sludge, mix scrap, mercury-contaminated waste, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl,
According to the administration, China is now the largest handler of waste from Taiwan.
The administration's officials, however, said that shipping waste abroad was not a final solution to the problem.
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