The Taichung City Government is considering ordering the coal-fired Taichung Power Plant to suspend the operation of four generators after its wastewater was repeatedly found to contain excessive levels of nitrate nitrogen.
The city government said the plant breached environmental laws by discharging polluted wastewater three times in the first quarter, the Chinese-language United Daily News said in a report yesterday.
The last round of tests on March 21 found that wastewater from the plant’s Nos. 1 to 4 generators contained nitrate nitrogen levels 200 percent higher than the allowable limit.
State-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) said that shutting down the four generators would reduce the nation’s total operating reserve margin to about 3 percent.
Taipower seeks to maintain an operating reserve margin of 10 percent during the summer, company spokesman Hsu Tsao-hua (徐造華) said.
Shutting the generators would cut Taipower’s power supply by 2.2 gigawatts, equivalent to about 6 to 7 percent of the nation’s total operating reserve margin, the company said.
The plant was fined a total of NT$3.48 million (US$112,822) by the city government from August last year to last month for nitrate nitrogen pollution, the report said.
As the plant has been found to have breached environmental laws at least twice in a year, the city government is mulling a fine of up to NT$20 million, Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau head Wu Chih-chao (吳志超) said.
The government has asked the plant to improve its wastewater discharge within a specified period.
Should it fail to do so, it could be forced to stop operating some of its generators in accordance with the Water Pollution Control Act (水污染防治法), Wu added.
Taipower last week said it had submitted plans to build a new waste treatment facility and improving existing ones at the plant.
It added that it has taken medium and long-term measures to further improve its facilities.
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