Environmental protection activists and residents of Taoyuan’s Guolin Borough yesterday accused waste disposal company Yu Hung of the dumping of massive amounts of waste acids and lime ash containing dioxins from one of its incinerators into an artificial pond formerly used to irrigate 120 hectares of farmland and urged Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) to immediately revoke the facility’s operating license.
Speaking at a news conference in Taipei, Tainan Community University director-general and environmental activist Huang Huan-chang (黃煥彰) said an investigation spearheaded by his organization found that sediment from the Shenmei Pond (滲眉埤) had been contaminated by a range of heavy metals, including copper, zinc, nickel and cadmium.
The probe used an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer, Tainan Community University researcher Chao Jui-guang (晁瑞光) said, adding that researchers began their scans at a distance of about 500m from the incinerator’s outflow pipelines and found that surface sediment contained excessive levels of heavy metal residues.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Ion concentrations of copper, zinc, cadmium and nickel in the most seriously polluted areas reached 938, 64, 24 and 19 times the safe limits specified by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), Chao said.
The results of 70 sample tests all indicated excessive levels of copper, while about half of the samples showed excessive levels of zinc and several samples revealed “inordinate amounts of nickel,” Chao said.
Huang added that Yu Hung had pumped the pond dry, assuming that in doing so, it would be able to cover up the misconduct.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Long-time environmental activist Lin Chang-mao (林長茂) said the firm was established in 2001 under the name “Kunyeh” by a former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taoyuan official — whose name he did not give — but later changed its name to avoid legal liability and is now known as Yu Hung.
Lin said that the Taoyuan Department of Environmental Protection said in July last year that it would consider revoking Yu Hung’s operating license after discovering that the company had forged waste processing data and illegally stored waste chemical solutions.
However, the firm’s incinerator is still operational and an analysis of the samples taken by the department has not yet been published, Lin said.
He said that deep-seated influence peddling between the former official and politicians from both the pan-green and pan-blue camps had contributed to the problem.
“The elections last year saw a shift in local political power, but we want to tell Mayor Cheng that if he fails to live up to people’s expectations, he too will be ousted,” Lin said.
Environmental protection group Taiwan Watch Institute secretary-general Herlin Hsieh (謝和霖) questioned the department’s approval of the types of waste eligible to be processed at the facility, which he said included asbestos, waste alkaline and acid fluids, and contrast media used in healthcare imaging.
He also questioned the agency’s decisions to give Yu Hung only the minimum fines stipulated by the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法) each time it was found to have violated a rule.
Guolin Borough Warden Chen Hsi-ta (陳錫達) said area residents have an elevated chance of developing cancer from the toxic gases emitted from the hot wastewater and the incinerator’s chimneys, and that many have died as a result.
Hsieh Chuo-mei (謝灼妹), the wife of Chen’s predecessor, said Yu Hung took her husband’s life, as well as having killed more than 40 eucalyptus and beefwood trees that she had planted.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lin Shu-fen (林淑芬) asked Tsai Hung-teh (蔡鴻德), the executive secretary of the EPA’s soil and groundwater remediation fund management board, why the firm’s waste removal license was renewed just a month after it was found to have committed the infractions it was cited for, and which agency was in charge of conferring the permits.
Asked whether the firm’s license would be revoked, Tsai said the municipal government has issued an official document demanding a revocation, but the firm has 42 days to submit a defensive statement.
The EPA has gathered all the necessary evidence related to Yu Hung’s alleged misconduct, and it has been delivered to prosecutors for investigation, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching