Environmental activists yesterday accused the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) of holding back information about sites which they allege have been contaminated with heavy metals that might contain dioxins and toxic waste.
Huang Huan-chang (黃煥彰), an associate professor in the Department of Nursing at Chung Hwa University of Medical Technology, told a press conference that large quantities of ash and dust, as well as slag from an electric arc furnace, were left at a site near Chiku Wetland (七股溼地) in Tainan County where there are fish farms and salt fields.
“Look at the shellfish dam, it was right on a pile of electric arc furnace slag,” Huang said, pointing to a picture he took from a fish farm there.
Huang said he used a field portable X-ray fluorescence analyzer (XRF) to screen the soil and discovered that the zinc concentration was higher than 190,000 parts per million (ppm) and the lead concentration was more than 20,000ppm.
“Our past experiences tell us that the figures show that there must be ash and dust buried in the soil. Ash and dust will result in the release of lead and cadmium if burned at a high temperature. It definitely contains dioxins,” he said.
Huang late last year found that ducks raised at a farm in Kaohsiung County’s Daliao Towanship (大寮) were contaminated with slag from a steel furnace, leading to the culling of about 9,000 ducks.
Several other similar cases were brought to light by Huang after that incident, including seven other contaminated zones in Kaohsiung County where there were pineapple fields and fish farms, a rice farm in Tainan County’s Houbi Towanship (後壁) and a site adjacent to Provincial Highway No. 61 (台六十一線) in Tainan County.
Peng Cheng-shi (彭成熹), section director of the EPA’s Department of Waste Management, who was also present at the press conference, said the soil samples dug out from the site near Chiku Wetland and near Provincial Highway No. 61 had already been tested.
However, he refused to reveal the results, saying that the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office had asked the EPA not to make the results public as prosecutors are still in the process of investigating.
“Tainan prosecutors sent us a letter on June 18 saying that the test results can’t be revealed in accordance with the principle of secret investigation. As a governmental agency, all we can do is abide by the regulations,” Peng said.
Unsatisfied with Peng’s response, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英), who organized yesterday’s press conference, blasted the EPA for not having a positive “can-do” attitude to protecting people from pollution.
“The EPA is entitled to announce test results and close off a site if it has been found to be contaminated,” she said.
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