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 (
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.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,