Kaohsiung residents and the rest of the nation were the losers once again this week in a court ruling stemming from the pollution of the Houjin River (後勁溪) in 2013, thanks to weak laws and years of a government mindset that favors major industries over human health and environmental protection.
The Kaohsiung High Administrative Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), overturning the NT$102 million (US$3.13 million at current exchange rates) fine that the Kaohsiung Environmental Protection Bureau imposed for discharging highly acidic and nickel-
contaminated wastewater into the river on Oct. 1, 2013. The court said the fine had been calculated incorrectly and ordered the bureau to issue a revision.
Tuesday’s ruling was the second time in less than six months that a higher court has overturned a lower court’s decision and ruled in favor of ASE — the Taiwan High Court’s Kaohsiung branch on Sept. 29 last year tossed out the convictions of four employees and cleared the company as well.
The judge in that ruling said the defendants should not have been charged with violating the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法) because the discharged wastewater was not “hazardous industrial waste,” and so they could only be charged with contravening the Water Pollution Control Act (水污染防治法).
The catch-22 was that the water pollution act could not be used in ASE’s case because it had been amended in February last year to cover the discharge of toxic wastewater by businesses and could not be applied retroactively to the 2013 spill.
In both rulings on Tuesday and September last year, the judges overturned local court verdicts on technicalities. While many people might disagree with those rulings, the judges’ decisions appear to follow the letter of the law, if not the spirit.
However, one thing that is not in dispute is that ASE’s K7 plant illegally discharged a large amount of untreated, toxic industrial wastewater into the Houjin River, polluting 1,390 hectares of farmland irrigated by the river and downstream fisheries.
Unfortunately, the court rulings favoring ASE allow the company’s version of the story to gain traction. While the firm has repeatedly apologized for the spill — and promised to donate at least NT$100 million annually for three decades to environmental protection — on its Web site ASE says that there was “no systematic practice of environmental transgressions” and the spill was a single, isolated accident caused by a contractor during a repair operation.
However, Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan says the Environmental Protection Administration’s pollution management database shows that ASE’s 17 plants in Kaohsiung had 29 environmental violation incidents from 2011 to 2013 — including three instances of diluting wastewater, more than 10 instances where water effluent did not meet environmental standards and several instances of failing to adopt water pollution prevention and control measures — and was fined accordingly.
To add insult to injury, while ASE was ordered to temporarily shut down the problematic K7 facility in December 2013, its other plants in Kaohsiung continued to fall afoul of environmental regulations and Citizen of the Earth said the firm had 19 more violation notices by June 2014.
ASE’s record of environmental non-compliance makes a mockery of the law. The company might, in the long run, be able to evade any meaningful punishment for the October 2013 spill, but the recent court rulings show that legislators and city councilors must do more to ensure that officials at the central and local levels have the equipment and the regulatory authority needed to fully monitor and enforce environmental laws and regulations.
The public and the nation must be protected from the callous disregard of industrial polluters.
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