A large amount of earth beside a landfill for industrial waste in Kaohsiung County has been illegally used to fill up pits in agricultural fields in Pingtung County, environmental officials said yesterday. But whether the transferred earth has contaminated those fields remains uncertain.
The illegal transfer began in December from a site in an ecological preserve in the mountainous area of Chishen township (
The earth in the fields had been taken for use in the construction industry.
On Wednesday, the police, working with prosecutor Yeh Ching-tsai (
Yesterday, environmental inspectors from the Kaohsiung County Bureau of Environmental Protection collected 10 samples from six spots at the site for further analysis.
The Kaohsiung County Council has received reports from residents that the site next to the landfill had been used as an illegal dumping ground for hazardous waste. Yeh said that the results of the soil analysis would determine if the reports are true.
"We still have no evidence that the soil at the site had been polluted due to illegal toxic waste dumping," Hsieh Chi-yen (謝季燕), the bureau director, told the Taipei Times yesterday.
In addition, Hsieh said that whether the nearby landfill had had any impact on the site is also uncertain and that the landfill will also be closely examined.
Hsieh said that the results of the soil analysis would not be available until Tuesday.
Established in 1994, the landfill was originally leased to a licensed waste handler, which handled 30,000 tonnes of non-hazardous industrial waste per month.
The company, Fine-tie Environmental Engineering Consultant Co Ltd (汎太環保工程顧問公司), treated sludge from water treatment plants, ash from power plants, and other non-hazardous industrial waste.
Fine-tie shut down in 2000 due to a new landfill owner's unwillingness to accept any waste. Fine-tie CEO Robert Lee (
Lee said that the landfill had been one of seven final repositories for industrial waste in Taiwan until the new owner decided not to accept any more industrial waste.
He added that though the seven repositories were created by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) to enable private companies to have a place to take industrial waste, they only handle less than 5 percent of the total amount of industrial waste generated in Taiwan daily.
"We, as well as other waste handlers, have been forced out of business due to the lack of landfills to store industrial waste," said Lee, who is also chairman of the Waste Recycling Treatment Community of Taiwan.
"Illegal dumping in Taiwan can be attributed to the lack of final repositories for 17 million tonnes of industrial waste generated by Taiwan each year," Lee said.
The EPA has been seeking places to build final repositories for industrial waste, but has encountered opposition each time it has announced a proposed site.
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