Five thousand tonnes of furnace slag was found dumped in a fishing pond in Chiayi County’s Dongshih Township (東石) on Saturday, and it is feared that the contaminated water might spread to neighboring properties, the Chiayi Environmental Protection Bureau said yesterday.
Dead fish were found floating in the contaminated pond, where water turned green from exposure to abandoned steel furnace slag, which contains chromium concentrations of more than 5,000 parts per million — 20 times greater than the legal limit of trace chromium in soil — the bureau said.
Human exposure to chromium can damage the respiratory tract, while long-term exposure can cause cancer.
The bureau said that according to the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法), furnace slag cannot be deposited on farmland or in fishing ponds, and violators have to bear the cost of removing the slag on top of the fine for breaking the law.
There are concerns that the contaminated water might seep into neighboring fishing ponds, which are separated from the affected pond by earth walls, the bureau said.
The slag was reportedly dumped at the site by members of a nearby temple. It was sourced from a contractor at Walsin Lihwa Co’s (華新麗華) steel plant in Tainan’s Yenshui District (鹽水) and was to be used in the construction of a parking lot, said Chung Hwa University of Medical Technology professor Huang Huan-chang (黃煥彰), who exposed the incident.
An unknown amount of furnace slag was buried in a 5,000m2 area east of the pond, where asphalt was laid over the slag dump, Huang said.
He said that illicit dumping of furnace slag has increased this year, following similar incidents in Taichung’s Dajia District (大甲) last month, Tainan’s Syuejia District (學甲) in August and Kaohsiung’s Cishan District (旗山) since 2013.
“Dumping furnace slag in the soil has become a consistent pattern by slag processing companies and industrial waste reprocessors, leading to an outrageous series of soil contamination incidents. The Environmental Protection Administration should be responsible for its management failure,” he said.
The increase in slag dumping suggests there is a glut of slag on the market, and it is time that slag be treated as industrial waste rather than a product that can be reprocessed, Huang said.
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