Environmental groups yesterday were angered to learn that part of a highly controversial cargo of mercury tainted waste, supposedly in storage at Kaohsiung Harbor, was shipped to Europe in December last year.
Kaohsiung Port authorities yesterday confirmed reports that Formosa Plastics Corporation (
"Thirty-two cargo containers filled with bio-hazard suits, empty barrels, tools and facilities used in Cambodia, arrived in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, and have [since] been transferred to a third country," said Kaohsiung Harbormaster Huang Kuo-ying (黃國英) yesterday.
News of the shipment, which first surfaced in the local press yesterday, has upset environmentalists who say the export was carried out less than publicly.
Local environmentalists expressed outrage at the "secret" export, claiming that the unidentified materials in the containers could endanger residents at the end destination.
"We're furious about this," said Joyce Fu (
Huang said, however, that all required documentation issued by the EPA and the Kaohsiung Customs Bureau was available, emphasizing that the export of the material was "absolutely legal".
Officials from the shipping line, Yang Ming Lines (YML, 陽明海運), told the Taipei Times yesterday that the cargo containers were considered to be "general cargo" instead of "dangerous" because the material they contained was deemed non-hazardous.
No inspection of the contents of the shipped containers was performed, however.
"We did not check what was actually contained in the 32 containers, because all required documents showed [the contents] were non-hazardous," said Shih Kuo-hsin (施國鑫), a manager at YML's Kaohsiung Office. He added that no further information about the destination of the containers would be made public.
EPA officials told the Taipei Times yesterday, however, that the shipped waste, amounting to about 100 tonnes, had already been treated properly in an undisclosed European county, and that all related information would be released when the procedures are completed.
Some 4,600 tons of toxic waste from an FPG facility in southern Taiwan were dumped in Cambodia illegally in 1998 by a waste handler contracted by the company. The waste was shipped back to Kaohsiung last April after being discovered by the Cambodian government.
It had subsequently been planned to ship the waste on to the US and France last year for proper disposal, but the transfers were held up by problems in identifying the components in the waste -- essential for determining how best to dispose of it -- and by protests from environmentalists.
FPC is to report to an EPA monitoring team today about its plans to treat the remaining waste at two factory sites in Kaohsiung County.
Members of the team told the Taipei Times that the point of that meeting is to review plans for a mercury-recovery machine the company is to purchase.
Although FPC reported to the EPA in late January that the company would purchase mercury-recovery facilities from the US to process its mercury-contaminated waste in Taiwan, sources abroad have suggested that the company is engaged in negotiations with waste handlers in both the US and Germany.
Officials from EPA's Bureau of Solid Waste Control told the Taipei Times that the company has still not given up the possibility of treating the waste abroad, as negotiations between the company and residents nearby its facility in Kaohsiung are not complete.
EPA officials said FPG has faced the dilemma of either exporting the waste to another country or treating it at home, since the illegal dumping scandal in Cambodia surfaced in late 1998.
"Some waste handlers have tried to extort the company by charging much higher prices for treatment, because of the controversy," said one environmental protection official who asked not to be identified.
"In terms of technology, the mercury-tainted waste can be treated easily," he said.
"If only people could have been better informed and be more confident of the company and the government," he added.
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