Changhua District Court yesterday detained the chief of the central Taiwan county's environmental protection bureau for alleged corruption.
The prosecution said it suspected Huang Sheng-fa (黃勝發) was responsible for granting an illicit license to a facility for the depositing of waste earth from clearing work in the wake of the 921 earthquake.
In accordance with the president's emergency decree following the Sept. 21 1999 temblor, the Changhua County Government drew up a regulation concerning the establishment of waste earth dumps in order to accommodate waste earth and debris from destroyed buildings.
The regulation stipulated that the establishment and operation of any new waste dump should be for the purpose of serving urgent post-quake needs. The first license the county government granted was to the Chieh Hsing (
However, the prosecution said, while the Chieh Hsing dump still had an extensive capacity, the county government approved an application for the establishment of another dump site to a company called Shuang Lun (
"According to the regulation, a precondition for the setting up of a new waste dump was that is had to be urgent and necessary. But this was not the case with the approval of Shuang Lun's application," said Wu Tsui-fang (吳萃芳), divisional head prosecutor at the Changhua District Prosecutors' Office.
Furthermore, she said, in the process of granting Shuang Lun the license, the county government failed to follow the legally required procedure. Wu said that one violation of the local government was its failure to examine the site.
Moreover, the Changhua government licensed Shuang Lun to receive regular waste in addition to waste from the earthquake, which was another violation of the regulation, Wu said.
The prosecution believes Huang and other county government officials illegally benefited from the granting of Shuang Lun's license. The facility is still in operation.
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