The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) should allow local governments to negotiate the exchange ratio of garbage and slag instead of imposing an overarching standard, Kaohsiung Environmental Protection Bureau Director Tsai Meng-yu (蔡孟裕) said yesterday.
Tsai made the remark at a public hearing held by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators Lai Jui-jung (賴瑞隆) and Chen Man-li (陳曼麗) about garbage disposal at which local government officials discussed the difficulties in promoting slag reuse.
The nation has 24 garbage incinerators, with the counties without incinerators — Yunlin, Taitung, Pingtung, Hualien, Penghu, Kinmen and Lienchiang — having to request that other local governments help burn their garbage.
Kaohsiung, with four incinerators, requires the counties to take 1.8 tonnes of furnace slag for every tonne of garbage, but some counties, especially Yunlin, say the ratio is excessively high.
To alleviate conflict, the EPA on July 11 proposed a draft bill governing the centralized management of waste disposal, which stipulates that local governments which help burn other counties’ garbage should require the counties to receive no more than 20 percent of the furnace slag.
“We have to deal with 250,000 tonnes of slag and 70,000 tonnes of ash derivatives every year, the most in the nation,” Tsai said. “We hope the EPA will think again about the 20 percent ratio. It should be determined by local governments, and elevated to between 80 percent and 180 percent.”
The central government should only intervene in local garbage disposal in emergencies, he added.
Promoting the reuse of slag in construction projects is challenging, as many developers are suspicious about its quality, Solid Waste Management Division Director Lin Tsan-ming (林燦銘) said.
Yunlin County Environmental Protection Bureau Deputy Director Chang Chiao-wei (張喬維) said his bureau supports the EPA’s new ratio and hoped it could be implemented as soon as possible.
Yunlin already contributes to waste disposal by tackling the many waste products from the Mailiao Power Plant and the county’s hospitals, Chang said.
“Every municipality has its own advantages and disadvantages [in waste disposal],” Taiwan Environmental Protection Union vice chairman Liu Jyh-jian (劉志堅) said, adding that medical and food waste should be included when formulating the ratio.
Lai concluded the hearing by demanding that the EPA hold another public hearing to gather more opinions on its draft bill.
The Executive Yuan’s Public Construction Commission should produce a report on furnace slag reuse within a month, he added.
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