A production agency that covered a bank of the Fanfan River (梵梵溪) with salt to simulate snow for a film shoot is to be fined, the Yilan County Government said yesterday, adding that the agency must clean up the area or face additional fines.
Taipei-based DJ Media Production Co on Saturday allegedly sent a crew of about 50 people to the hot spring to film an advertisement for a cellphone game titled Monster Strike and dumped salt on the river’s bank to simulate snow.
Following complaints made on Facebook, inspectors yesterday performed chlorine ion, conductivity, chemical oxygen demand and pH level tests.
Photo: Chien Hui-ju, Taipei Times
The results were consistent with salt pollution, Yilan Environmental Bureau acting director Kan Li-ho (康立和) said.
The agency is to be fined for violations of Article 30 of the Water Pollution Control Act (水污染防治法) and Article 27 of the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法), with the former carrying a fine between NT$30,000 and NT$3 million (US$933 and US$93,254) and the latter of between NT$1,200 and NT$6,000, Kan said.
The agency issued a text message saying: “We took all precautions to reduce pollution during filming and staff cleaned up after filming to minimize the environmental impact. Regardless of those facts, we are profoundly sorry that we have inflicted harm.”
The agency filmed in the area without a permit, the Yilan Cultural Affairs Bureau said, adding that the permit was delayed because of the application’s “excessive brevity and vagueness.”
DJ Media Production has been blacklisted in Yilan, the bureau said.
Any applications to film in Yilan must include a statement pledging to do no harm to the environment, the bureau said.
Hualien Environmental Association director Wu Chang-hung (吳昌鴻) yesterday said the salt caused grave and systematic damage to the river’s food chain by killing the river’s bottom-dwelling algae, which would starve fish and crustaceans.
Low rainfall in the region could also aggravate the salt damage, Wu added.
The environmental impact of salt pollution is probably worse than agricultural chemicals, because salt can become embedded in rock crevices or settle on the river bottom, which can cause lasting damage to every aspect of the river’s ecological structure, Wilderness Society Yilan Chapter secretary Wang Chun-ming (王俊明) said.
Chlorine and sodium ions released from salt can have a variety of negative effects, such as changes in pH levels and reduced oxygen levels and conductivity, making the environment uninhabitable for some river species, including Distoechodon tumirostris, an endangered species of fish, as well as tadpoles, Wang said.
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