Having visited 115 townships this year, civic environmental protection group the Conservation Mothers Foundation (CMF) said it found Nantou County’s Puli Township (埔里) the dirtiest of all.
It is the third year that the group has carried out an environmental inspection. This year it was conducted from March to last month.
Foundation president Julia Chou (周春娣) said Puli, Greater Taichung’s Dajia (大甲) and Pingtung County’s Donggang (東港) ranked as having the dirtiest streets in Taiwan.
The judging criteria included the amount of cigarette butts, advertisement fliers and pet excrement, she said, adding that group members had taken hundreds of photographs of garbage in the streets.
Chou said the townships had been found to have a poor environment in the previous two years, but had made no improvement this year.
Trash was often seen along the side of the roads and even outside households in Puli, Chou said.
Chou also mentioned an incident in 2006 in which a couple named Nakamura became the first Japanese to participate in a long-stay project in Puli. However, they soon moved out of the town, citing dog excrement, pollution and poor air quality as reasons for their departure.
Chou said it is a shame that Puli is still so dirty even though its is five years since the Nakamuras left.
Showing photographs the group took, Chou said: “I don’t understand how people would want to eat food standing in these trash dumps.”
She said public trash cans were nowhere to be found in the night market next to Dajia Jenn Lann Temple (大甲鎮瀾宮), so littering on the ground was a serious problem.
Other than the three townships, the group also named the restrooms at Greater Tainan’s train station as having the worst odor of all the public restrooms inspected, and said that the section between Greater Taichung’s Cingshuei (清水) and Dajia on Provincial Highway No. 1 was the dirtiest section of highway.
In response, Puli Township Mayor Chou Yi-hsiung (周義雄) said: “We humbly accept the suggestions and there is still much room for improvement.”
Lin Chien-hui (林建輝), -director-general- of the Environmental -Protection Administration’s (EPA) Department of Environmental Sanitation and Toxic Substance Management, said the administration would send official documents to local government agencies reminding them to clean up their townships.
“The EPA does regular evaluations, but the local government will be notified in advance,” Lin said, adding: “The efforts from the CMF to do check-ups on these townships without warning help reinforce what the EPA does.”
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