A person using an incinerator to secretly treat hazardous industrial waste on a private farm has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday, citing a Yunlin District Court ruling. The EPA said that the case demonstrates how illegal waste handlers are operating by offering low prices to unscrupulous factory owners looking for a cheap way to dump their waste.
The sentenced person, surnamed Lee, who does not have a license to handle waster, was found last March to have used a small incinerator he built secretly to treat waste chemical solvents on his father's farmland in Yunlin County. Environmental inspectors found several tonnes of toxic waste, in the form of oily sludge, at the site. An analysis of the waste showed that the levels of the heavy metal chromium exceeded acceptable standards. The police confiscated the incinerator and all of the facilities. Barrels at the site which contained suspected industrial waste were later removed by the government.
Hung Yi-yung (
"The price offered by illegal waste handlers is about one tenth of that charged by licensed waste operators. Sadly, seized illegal waste handlers rarely reveal who their customers are," Hung said.
In this case, Hung said that the customers who hired Lee to process their hazardous industrial waste on the cheap remain unknown.
Hung said that the ignorance of illegal waste handlers about the punishment for violating the Waste Disposal Act (
However, for years, local environmental groups have called for the act to be revised to beef up penalties in order to better discourage would-be violators.
Hung said that illegal dumping of waste has been reduced since 1999, when the EPA began to set up new regulations that ensure a sufficient capacity of handlers who can process industrial waste.
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