Sun, Sep 23, 2001 page1

• Taipei vexed by trash mountains

  GARBAGE The city government says it is doing all it can to tackle the piles of trash that are piled high on Taipei's streets, but the public is growing weary of the putrid stench

  • By Tsai Ting-I / STAFF REPORTER
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  Six days after the worst flooding in Taipei City in decades, piles of trash are growing in the streets, and the stench is becoming unbearable. Unhappy city residents are demanding to know when the rubbish will be taken away.

  "These piles of trash have been here for six days already, and we don't know when the government will come to clean it all up," said Hsiung Hung-chao (熊宏照), who lives in Taipei's Sungshan District.

  

  Trash dumped on Taipei's Yungchi Road clogs up the street and impedes traffic yesterday. In the wake of Typhoon Nari, garbage and soggy household goods have been piled up along the capital's streets.

  PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES

  Most of the trash from Sungshan is being dumped in piles that are already nearly two stories high in an open field where the Taipei Baseball Stadium used to be.

  But the Taipei City Government says the trash will be off the streets by tomorrow morning.

  Typhoon Nari inundated thousands of office buildings and homes early this week, prompting city residents to dump large amounts of ruined furniture onto the streets. As refrigerators across the city ceased to work in the ensuing power failures, thousands of tonnes of spoiled food joined the damaged furniture on the streets, creating an unbearable smell of rotting trash.

  The city government says it chose the site of the old baseball stadium to serve as a temporary dumping ground because it was convenient.

  But as the piles grow higher and higher, residents living in the district opposite the stadium are growing weary of the smell.

  "We don't mind the trash being dumped there, but the problem is the smell and the question of how many days the trash will remain there," said another resident, surnamed Lin.

  Lin said that while the weather has been overcast for the past few days, warmer weather may cause the trash to decompose faster.

  "After half a day under the sun, the trash is really going to stink," Lin said.

  Residents in Taipei's Hsinyi District have also voiced complaints about the growing piles of trash along the area's streets, which until now haven't been collected.

  "Since the city government doesn't want to clean up the trash, we've no choice but to dump it all on the streets to force them to deal with the problem," an angry Hsinyi District resident told TVBS yesterday.

  Taipei City officials blame the slow disposal process on a lack of operating facilities to incinerate the trash.

  According to Chang Chin-lung (張金龍), an official from the city's Bureau of Environmental Protection, which is in charge of garbage clearance, the Neihu and Mucha incinerators were closed for annual repairs and were not opened until last Wednesday.

  In addition, the Shanchuku landfill collapsed recently, which has slowed the disposal of trash in the Peitou area.

  "In the beginning, we had problems with manpower and logistics, but now we're fully operational and clearing trash 24 hours a day. We've even received help from from Taichung County, Nantou County and the military," Chang said.

  The city government began clearing trash on Monday, but was only able to deal with 1,000 tonnes on the first day. Now it is dealing with 20,000 tonnes a day.

  As of yesterday, it had taken away about 50,000 tonnes of trash and over 4,000 tonnes of mud since the typhoon struck, officials said.

  However, officials estimate there remains another 100,000 tonnes to be collected in Taipei City alone.

  The city government has promised to remove all remaining trash from the city's streets by tomorrow morning and to empty the baseball stadium site within a couple of days.

  But while city officials are working overtime to solve problems left by Nari, another tropical depression is taking shape in the seas some 500km southeast of Taiwan. The Central Weather Bureau predicted that the depression might develop into a tropical storm over the next few days and could hit Taiwan in less than a week.

  The death toll from Nari climbed to 88 yesterday, with 208 injured and 13 others missing.
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