About 100 protesters from Kaohsiung’s Lujhu (路竹) and Hunei (湖內) districts yesterday rallied at a site in Hunei where Chen Nan Iron Wire Co plans to build a production facility, saying that the plant would create a significant amount of pollution and the project should be canceled.
Protesters, mostly elderly farmers, carried a coffin and hired professional mourners to “celebrate” the factory’s groundbreaking ceremony at Sinyuan Farm — owned by state-run Taiwan Sugar Corp, which received approval to lease the property to private businesses for industrial development in 2006.
Lujhu resident Tsai Chun-chi (蔡春紀) said that the manufacturing processes of the iron wire and screw factories being constructed at the site involve immersing metals in acid to remove impurities and oxides, and the wastewater would be directly discharged into the Erren River (二仁溪), which is used in the area’s fish farms and to irrigate fields.
The Kaohsiung City Government passed an environmental review of the plant in May last year, but local residents did not find out about the project until April this year, which was a breach of the spirit of the environmental review that seeks to include all interested parties in the review of a development project, Tsai said.
Environmental Jurists Association lawyer Chang Yu-yin (張譽尹) said that although the estimated lead and manganese concentrations of the wastewater specified in the company’s development plan meet effluent discharge standards, they are not suitable for irrigation and aquaculture purposes, and as the wastewater is to be released directly into the Erren River it would harm local agriculture and aquaculture.
The company’s development plan neglected to assess the impact of its effluent on agriculture and fish farming, while the city government passed the review based on misinformation, which was a major procedural flaw, Chang said.
Chen Nan also proposes to use recycled water from the plant to irrigate its greenery, which might significantly affect the quality of the area’s soil and the purity of its groundwater, he said.
According to the Ministry of the Interior’s National Regional Plan for 2013, and the conclusions reached at the National Food Safety Conference in 2011, Taiwan Sugar Corp’s high-quality farmland should be preserved for agricultural development, yet the city government has ignored this and approved the industrial use of Hsinyuan Farm, he said.
The program to clean up the Erren River has already cost the nation hundreds of millions dollars and allowing Chen Nan to discharge wastewater into the river would make a force of the the restoration efforts, he said.
The company has said that all the effluent would be processed according to legal standards, and more than 90 percent of the wastewater would be recycled.
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