A whistle-blower who informed on a company that discharged contaminated water into a river via a secret pipe is to be awarded NT$3 million (US$93,107), the largest reward ever offered in the nation for a report on water pollution.
The Kaohsiung Environmental Protection Bureau on Tuesday said that it would give an unidentified informant 60 percent of a NT$5 million fine levied on a food factory found to have illegally discharged wastewater into the city’s Houjin River (後勁溪).
The bureau in April raided the factory in the city’s Renwu District (仁武) and discovered a hidden drainage pipe that was used to discharge unprocessed wastewater into a ditch that led to the river.
The bureau demolished the pipe, but the factory was found pumping contaminated water into the ditch two days after the raid.
The bureau on Tuesday gave the factory’s operator the NT$5 million fine, saying its actions were a major violation of the Water Pollution Control Act (水污染防治法).
“The factory discharged more than 100 tonnes of water used to mix flour and boil dough every day. Although the wastewater did not contain high concentrations of heavy metals, it did not meet effluent discharge standards,” bureau Environmental Inspection Division Director Ma Chen-yao (馬振耀) said.
The raid was organized after a former employee reported the illegal activity at the factory to the bureau.
The reward is about 12 times the informant’s annual income, the bureau said.
A city water pollution by-law stipulates that informants with solid evidence can be awarded up to 20 percent of fines levied against firms, with the reward tripled if the informant is a current or former employee.
“The food factory whistle-blower is the first informant to be rewarded following implementation of the bylaw in December last year, which encourages people to be actively involved in pollution prevention and environmental protection,” the bureau said.
While the factory was equipped with an effluent treatment system, it did not use it, reportedly to save on electricity and treatment costs.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS