Results of tests on groundwater samples collected near CPC Corp, Taiwan’s gasoline station on Green Island (綠島) are to be made available tomorrow at the latest, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday.
After a request last month by the Taitung Environmental Protection Bureau to help it investigate a leak, the EPA collected soil and groundwater samples near the station, EPA Soil and Groundwater Remediation Fund Management Board executive secretary Chen Shyh-wei (陳世偉) said.
Results received last week from tests of the soil samples showed that concentrations of key pollutants — total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) and methyl tert-butyl ether — were within safe levels, Chen said, adding that the report on the groundwater samples would be available today or tomorrow.
Following the leak, four bed-and-breakfast businesses near the station stopped using groundwater, and the company installed pipes to supply water and paid the water bills, he said.
The leak did not reach the sea, as CPC has infrastructure to stop that from happening, he said.
While the company appeared to take more precautions in dealing with the incident following another leak at an oil depot in Penghu County that was discovered in the middle of July, it failed to report the Green Island leak to the bureau within three hours of its discovery, as required by Article 28 of the Water Pollution Control Act (水污染防治法), Chen said.
The bureau has fined CPC NT$15,000 for the reporting delay, and the company might face further sanctions if the groundwater is found to be affected, 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:
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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