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EPA to monitor toxic trucks

To prevent the illegal dumping of hazardous industrial waste, the Environmental Protection Ad-ministration (EPA) will next month broaden the application of the Global Positioning System (GPS) surveillance of trucks transporting hazardous industrial waste.

The EPA's adoption of GPS technology to trace routes of the toxic trucks came from a series of illegal waste dumping cases that occurred in the late 1990s. One the most notorious catastrophes occurred in July 2000, when more than 100 tonnes of toxic-chemical solvents were discharged by illegal waste handlers into the Chishan River in Kaohsiung County, polluting the drinking water of 3 million residents.

Last December, the EPA began to trace the routes of 260 toxic trucks by using GPS technology. Beginning next month, the application will be broadened to include 700 trucks transferring other kinds of hazardous waste, including medical waste, sludge, fly ash and bottom ash collected from waste incinerators. Affected waste handlers will be given four months to prepare for the new regulation.

Officials said that each regulated truck would have to install an on-board GPS receiver, which would sealed tightly after being tested by the EPA.

As long as the truck's engine is on, data representing its location and speed will be simultaneously shown on the monitoring system set up at the EPA, officials said.

The map display shows the trucks' exact travel paths and locations and is superimposed onto a base map showing locations of sensitive polluting factories, rivers, and protected areas. It will be an important reference for EPA officials when speculating about illegal dumping.

"When seeing unusual locations, such as riversides or protected mountainous areas, we will immediately send environmental inspectors to carry out a field investigation," Yang Ching-shi (楊慶熙), deputy director of the EPA's Solid Waste Control Bureau, said at a press conference yesterday.

Yang said that GPS application would be further broadened to an additional 280 trucks that ferry other kinds of hazardous waste.

"Hopefully, we can regulate 100 percent of trucks shipping hazardous waste by the end of next year in order to avoid the occurrence of illegal waste dumping," Yang said.

Yang said it was affordable for waste handlers to install on-board GPS receivers, the unit price of which is about NT$25,000. Yang estimated that the monthly communication fee would be less than NT$600.

Violators will be fined between NT$60,000 and NT$300,000, according to related environmental laws.

In the late 1990s, the EPA began to comprehensively inspect remote areas to discover illegal dumps contaminated by toxic waste. So far, the EPA has regulated 175 illegal waste dumps.

Twelve of 17 illegal dumping sites listed as "most dangerous" have been either temporarily closed or cleaned up.

As technologies improve, Yang said, transferring real-time images through the GPS monitoring system might be considered.
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