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EPA criticized for incinerator policy

Anti-incinerator activists vowed to challenge the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) on its waste management policies yesterday and also to ask lawmakers to reject the EPA's NT$3.27 billion budget proposal for building new incinerators.

However, complicated political manipulation at the legislature resulted in the approval of the controversial budget, which the groups say wastes taxpayers' money

At a public hearing held at the end of November, EPA head Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) promised to reconsider the necessity of building more incinerators and to respond to questions raised by activists within three months.

George Cheng (鄭益明), secretary-general of Taiwan Watch Institution, one of the total 122 groups, said yesterday that Hau is just going to have to eat his words.

"It's been three months. None of us received any response from the EPA," Cheng said, adding that the EPA's incinerator policy would further irritate groups.

Cheng said that this month anti-incinerator activists would rally this month to demand clear answers from the EPA because there are too many hidden problems with the agency's waste policies that governs incinerators.

"One example of government negligence is that the EPA allows companies to recycle ash collected from the bottom waste incinerators without establishing related standards in advance," Cheng said.

Cheng said the EPA only designates that the ash being recycled should pass the Toxic Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP). The method, however, fails to determine dioxin levels present in incinerator ash, according to Cheng.

"Road bases made from incinerator ash lead to the release of toxic dioxin into the environment," Cheng said.

On the basis of the EPA's original estimates in the 1990s, 36 incinerators would have been capable of burning 30,400 tonnes of municipal solid waste per day by the end of next year. Last March, the EPA canceled four incinerator projects.
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