The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) is neglecting pollution in Changhua County’s Dadu River Estuary Wildlife Refuge, lawmakers said yesterday.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) told a press conference that the 3 hectare refuge was one of the most important wetlands in Asia, but that it had been polluted, threatening the ecosystem and humans.
Huang said she had informed the EPA about the problem and was told it suspected that the pollution consists of coal ash and flue dust, fine particles of metal emitted by a smelter.
She said the EPA had shirked its responsibilities by blaming the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ River Management Office for the problem.
He Jiane-rin (何建仁), an EPA section chief, said the agency had used the word “suspected” because the official results of inspections had yet to be determined. However, he said it was confirmed yesterday that the refuge was polluted by toxic industrial waste, he added.
The agency would work with the River Management Office to clean up the waste, he said.
“We will also inspect the soil and groundwater,” He said. “If they are found to be contaminated, we will place the refuge under our supervision.”
Huang Huan-chang (黃煥彰), an associate professor at Chunghua University of Medical Technology’s department of nursing, said the dioxin in the soil was 2.5 times normal values.
“Pollutants in the earth spread through the water in the Dadu River as the tides ebb and flow,” Huang Huan-chang said. “Mudskippers, fiddler crab and oysters have to live in an environment filled with flue dust.”
Green Party Taiwan spokesperson Pan Han-shen (潘翰聲) said the EPA and local environmental protection bureaus had failed to protect the environment, allowing poisonous substances into the food chain.
“Steel and electroplating plants are a cancer for the land in Taiwan,” he said. “Now the cancer cells have got out of hand and spread.”
“Like a failed immune system, the environmental bureaus didn’t do their job,” Pan said.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to