A backlog of 8,000 tonnes of unprocessed garbage has sparked a war of words between Hsinchu County Commissioner Chiu Ching-chun (邱鏡淳) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Democratic Progressive Party Hsinchu County commissioner candidate Cheng Chao-fang (鄭朝方).
Chiu has repeatedly suggested that some unnamed people have highlighted the garbage issue for political gain.
He called Cheng’s proposal to create a waste disposal cooperative with Taoyuan and Miaoli County “cliched” and claimed that his administration last year had made an identical proposal, which was turned down by the Hsinchu City Government.
Photo: Huang Mei-chu, Taipei Times
The county government would again submit the proposal to Hsinchu Mayor Lin Chih-chien (林智堅) in the near future, Chiu said.
The county government has signed a contract with a food waste treatment plant in Hsinfeng Township (新豐) to increase the region’s disposal capacity and has opened bidding to recycle waste from landfills into industrial fuel, he said.
Cheng’s campaign office said that Chiu’s negligence over his two terms in office have caused the garbage problem, adding that the public’s trust in and patience for Chiu and Hsinchu County Deputy Commissioner Yang Wen-ke (楊文科) have run out.
Yang is the KMT’s candidate for Hsinchu County commissioner.
Separately, the Hsinchu City Bureau of Environmental Protection said in a statement that the city’s incineration plant processes 150 tonnes of the county’s waste each day, equivalent to 70 percent of the county’s daily trash.
“Instead of politicizing the waste problem, the county should develop long-term plans for waste disposal on its own,” the bureau said.
The county government is responsible for disposing of or utilizing the incinerator residue from its waste, as the issue is outside of the regional cooperation proposal, the bureau said.
According to its calculations, processing the county’s waste has generated 6,659 tonnes of incinerator residue and 2,220 tonnes of fly ash monolith, the bureau said, adding that the city government expects the county to take responsibility for the problem.
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