Kaohsiung's water passes safety test

One year after residents of Kaohsiung County complained of ill-health following pollution of the Kaoping River (高屏溪), the Kao-hsiung County Government this week released a report stating that water supplied by Taiwan Water Supply Corporation (TWSC) in the Kaohsiung area meets national safety standards for drinking.

TWSC is Taiwan's only water supply company and is owned by the state.

Taiwan's national standards for drinking mean that the water may be drunk after being boiled, not that it may be drunk direct from the tap.

Environmentalists in southern Taiwan said yesterday, however, that the provision of safe water did not mean that long-term problems resulting from river pollution in the south had been solved.

The Kaoping River, one of the main sources of drinking water in southern Taiwan, was seriously polluted by the illegal dumping of toxic chemical solvents last July. Truck drivers hired by the waste handler Shengli (昇利) discharged more than 100 tonnes of chemical solvents, including the toxin xylene (二甲苯), into the river.

The illegal dumping caused serious water pollution, leaving millions of residents without tap water for days.

By the time the case was exposed on July 14 last year, many residents had been drinking polluted boiled water for several days. A number of residents reported vomiting and skin inflammation.

After that, environmental officials from the Kaohsiung County Government discovered that the water didn't smell as good as it should and that the quantity of the phenol (酚類含量) it contained was unacceptably high. TWSC was fined as a result.

Although TWSC later said that the quality of the tap water had been raised to meet national standards, residents seemed to have little confidence.

In a bid to allay the fears of consumers, environmental officials from the Kaohsiung County Government carried out a five-month project to monitor the quality of tap water from January through May this year.

Environmental officials took samples from six major water supply stations in Kaohsiung County over the five-month period.

According to the report, the quality of all 120 water samples met national standards.

But environmentalists in southern Taiwan told the Taipei Times yesterday that the provision of safe tap water did not mean that long-term problems resulting from river pollution in the south had been solved.

"We don't think national standards for tap water ensure safety because they don't test for certain dangerous materials, such as heavy metals," said Yang Ping-yu (楊娉育), executive-general of Kaohsiung-based Takao Hill Association for National Parks (柴山自然公園促進會).

Illegal dumping in the south has gradually increased the vulnerability of the tap water supply system in the past few decades. Residents in the Kaohsiung metropolitan area have, therefore, had little confidence in tap water.

Most drink nothing but the water they buy from water vendors, who claim that their product has been carefully filtered and sterilized.

The notorious pollution case last July culminated in an indictment last August. Prosecutors said that about 13,500 tonnes of toxic waste generated by Eternal Chemical Company (長興化工) had been dumped secretly by contractors hired by the waste handler Shengli since 1997.

Twenty-two people from Eternal Chemical and Shengli were indicted. Prosecutors have requested that five be given life sentences. In addition, the prosecutors requested that Eternal be fined NT$260 million and Shengli NT$160 million.