A recycling company last year allegedly dumped 200,000 tonnes of furnace slag in rice paddies in Tainan before leasing the paddies to farmers, resulting in tens of thousands of kilograms of rice grown in the contaminated area reaching the market.
Five company officials now face charges, authorities said yesterday.
Tainan-based recycler Ming Hsiang Hsin Co (明祥馨環保公司) allegedly buried tonnes of furnace slag in 3.9 hectares of paddies along the Jiangjun River (將軍溪), the Bureau of Investigation’s Chiayi office said.
Photo: CNA
The company covered the dump sites with soil and then rented the paddies to local farmers, the office said.
About 70,000 jin (42 tonnes) of rice was harvested from the contaminated paddies and sold in April, the office said.
The office and Tainan’s Environmental Protection Bureau on Tuesday conducted a joint inspection and excavation of the sites and found 200,000 tonnes of slag, the office said.
Photo: Yang Chin-cheng, Taipei Times
Five Ming Hsiang Hsin officials face charges of violating the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法) and the Business Accounting Act (商業會計法) and forgery.
However, Huang Yi-jen (黃怡仁), deputy director of the Council of Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Agency’s Southern Region Branch, quoted the owner of the affected paddies as saying that only about 45,000 jin of rice was harvested, not the 70,000 jin the bureau estimated.
Paddy owner Lin Fu-shun (林富順) also presented certified test reports for the April harvest, which showed no excessive heavy metal residue had been detected in the rice, Huang said.
Ming Hsiang Hsin began operations in 2011 and was licensed by the Tainan City Government to recycle and reprocess furnace slag into raw materials for concrete and asphalt concrete, the Tainan Environmental Protection Bureau said.
The company’s records show that it had processed 400,000 tonnes of furnace slag and earned about NT$200 million (US$6.18 million) from processing the slag since then, the Bureau of Investigation’s Chiayi office said.
The office said it was still working on tracing the whereabouts of the other 200,000 tonnes of slag.
The council said that it has declared the affected paddies to be high pollution-risk farmland, and it ordered the city government to trace and inspect crops grown on the paddies. It said the crops would be destroyed if they were found to have excessive concentrations of heavy metals.
The council said its staff, along with personnel from Tainan’s agricultural and environmental agencies, yesterday took samples of soil and crops at the dump sites and farmland within a 500m radius of the sites.
It added that the Agriculture and Food Agency had conducted 24 random inspections of Tainan farmland considered to be of high pollution risk over the past three years and no irregularities had been reported.
MORE VISITORS: The Tourism Administration said that it is seeing positive prospects in its efforts to expand the tourism market in North America and Europe Taiwan has been ranked as the cheapest place in the world to travel to this year, based on a list recommended by NerdWallet. The San Francisco-based personal finance company said that Taiwan topped the list of 16 nations it chose for budget travelers because US tourists do not need visas and travelers can easily have a good meal for less than US$10. A bus ride in Taipei costs just under US$0.50, while subway rides start at US$0.60, the firm said, adding that public transportation in Taiwan is easy to navigate. The firm also called Taiwan a “food lover’s paradise,” citing inexpensive breakfast stalls
TRADE: A mandatory declaration of origin for manufactured goods bound for the US is to take effect on May 7 to block China from exploiting Taiwan’s trade channels All products manufactured in Taiwan and exported to the US must include a signed declaration of origin starting on May 7, the Bureau of Foreign Trade announced yesterday. US President Donald Trump on April 2 imposed a 32 percent tariff on imports from Taiwan, but one week later announced a 90-day pause on its implementation. However, a universal 10 percent tariff was immediately applied to most imports from around the world. On April 12, the Trump administration further exempted computers, smartphones and semiconductors from the new tariffs. In response, President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration has introduced a series of countermeasures to support affected
CROSS-STRAIT: The vast majority of Taiwanese support maintaining the ‘status quo,’ while concern is rising about Beijing’s influence operations More than eight out of 10 Taiwanese reject Beijing’s “one country, two systems” framework for cross-strait relations, according to a survey released by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Thursday. The MAC’s latest quarterly survey found that 84.4 percent of respondents opposed Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula for handling cross-strait relations — a figure consistent with past polling. Over the past three years, opposition to the framework has remained high, ranging from a low of 83.6 percent in April 2023 to a peak of 89.6 percent in April last year. In the most recent poll, 82.5 percent also rejected China’s
PLUGGING HOLES: The amendments would bring the legislation in line with systems found in other countries such as Japan and the US, Legislator Chen Kuan-ting said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷) has proposed amending national security legislation amid a spate of espionage cases. Potential gaps in security vetting procedures for personnel with access to sensitive information prompted him to propose the amendments, which would introduce changes to Article 14 of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Chen said yesterday. The proposal, which aims to enhance interagency vetting procedures and reduce the risk of classified information leaks, would establish a comprehensive security clearance system in Taiwan, he said. The amendment would require character and loyalty checks for civil servants and intelligence personnel prior to
RSS