In a bid to tackle water-pollution problems and increase water efficiency, new pollution regulations will be implemented soon, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday.
The EPA estimates that more than 16,000 firms will be affected by the new regulations.
The new EPA rules will see treated household sewage from communities or schools used for plant watering and dust-control measures on the nation's roads.
"However, treated sewage water should meet standards ensuring that both soil and groundwater will not be contaminated," Cheng Shean-rong (鄭顯榮), director-general of the EPA's Bureau of Water Quality Protection, said at a press conference yesterday.
Cheng said the waste water should also pose no threat to workers during the cleansing process.
Cheng said the new regulations were triggered by discussions about water efficiency last year, when Taiwan suffered its worst-ever drought in 20 years.
During the drought, Taipei City Government issued administrative orders to allow treated household waste water to be be used to control dust on the roads and to water plants.
To further promote water conservation, the EPA said yesterday that industrial waste water meeting industrial effluent standards will be reused, though not for the purposes of soil treatment.
"However, projects need to be approved in advance by the local environmental authority overseeing any firm that wishes to take advantage of the new regulations," Cheng said.
If factories want to recycle waste water for their own production, the water doesn't have to meet industrial effluent standards, Cheng said.
In addition, the EPA has loosened regulations on the transportation of industrial-waste water. In the past, industrial-waste water could only be transported by pipes connecting factories. New regulations will allow the transportation of industrial waste water by trucks.
EPA officials said the closure of factories in industrial complexes left some sewage systems installed unused. New regulation will create more business opportunities for the treatment of waste water from factories outside industrial complexes.
Meanwhile, new regulations also require reports from the Environmental Impacts Assessment on the discharging of treated waste water to the environment from animal husbandry, aquaculture, zoos and sugar plantations.
"We have to ensure that organic waste water discharged by these industries will cause limited impacts on the soil," Cheng said.
Eleven regulations on water-pollution control will be implemented by the end of this month.
According to EPA deputy administrator Chang Chu-en (張祖恩), the establishment of new regulations will complete the existing Water Pollution Control Act (水污染防治法).
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift