Dozens of Pingtung County residents yesterday protested in front of the Hsiangyi leather factory near Toucian River (頭前溪), accusing the factory of polluting the environment by emitting sulfuric acid fumes and discharging inadequately treated effluent.
Holding up a banner that reads: “Unscrupulous business poisons residents for 20 years. Get out of Toucian River,” the protesters said that a terrible smell from the factory pervades the air and questioned why the Pingtung County Environmental Protection Bureau has not ordered the factory to suspend its operations.
Pingtung Environmental Protection Union director Hung Hui-hsiang (洪輝祥) said the establishment has undergone numerous name changes and, except for two years during which it moved, has remained a major source of pollution.
Hsiangyi was involved in a tainted lard incident last year, in which it provided waste oil from leather processing to Chin Wei Co, which mixed the oil with feed oil and sold it to a Pingtung-based cooking oil manufacturer headed by Kuo Lieh-cheng (郭烈成).
Hung said the sulfuric acid in the air comes from sodium sulfide — which is used in processing leather — bonding with oxygen.
“Sulfur acid at concentrations of point one parts per million [ppm] is enough to rupture people’s nasal mucus, and concentrations of 500ppm can be lethal,” Hung said.
He said the sulfuric acid in the air is so thick that many of the windows and air conditioners in the areas have shown signs of corrosion.
The plant does not have any equipment to reduce air pollutants and just uses air fresheners to cover up the smell of its fumes, Hung said.
He said the cadmium powder used to ensure leathers retain their color had spread to local farmland, threatening food safety.
Furthermore, the facility has routinely tapped excessive amounts of groundwater to which it does not have the right and inspections by the bureau found that the chemical oxygen demand of the plant’s outflow exceeded the standard value stipulated by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), he said.
The protesters later met with bureau officials and reached consensus on several points. The bureau agreed that it would test wastewater from the plant twice a week, starting today, for one month, and once every two weeks from the second to the sixth month to ensure that the plant’s effluent conform to EPA standards.
The bureau also promised to dispatch personnel to conduct air quality tests to determine air quality.
Meanwhile, citing an official document issued by the Pingtung Water Resources Bureau yesterday afternoon, Hung said the agency would start penalizing the plant if it continues to tap groundwater.
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