Twenty-six people are facing charges for illegally dumping industrial waste across five municipalities, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday.
A “criminal ring” of concrete processing firms and waste disposal operators allegedly dumped industrial waste at 11 locations in Taichung, as well as Changhua, Nantou, Yunlin and Miaoli counties, the agency said.
The waste was dumped at pits left open by illicit mining operations or on rented properties, it said, describing the act as “organized crime” aimed at profiteering.
Photo courtesy of the Environmental Protection Administration
After receiving intelligence last year, the Changhua District Prosecutors’ Office asked the EPA to track the records of the waste disposal operators and found that they had filed falsified records.
In July last year, prosecutors, police and environmental office personnel from the municipalities raided the companies’ plants, the EPA said.
An investigation found that three waste disposal companies did not properly handle the silt they had received from other companies, and sent it to three concrete processing plants in Miaoli, Changhua and Taichung, it said.
Some industrial waste can be converted into recyclable materials if properly processed, but the suspects did not follow the required procedures, EPA Bureau of Environmental Inspection Northern Branch Commander Shih Sheng-chun (施勝鈞) said.
The suspects told the owners of the rented properties that they would place agricultural fertilizer in the fields, but dumped industrial waste instead, the EPA said.
The illegally dumped waste totaled nearly 150,000m3, it said.
The suspects could face a prison term of one to five years or a fine of up to NT$15 million (US$499,484) for contravening the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法), Shih said.
Water leaking from some of the waste disposal sites was found to contain up to 9.1 milligrams of nickel per liter (mg/L) of water, higher than the maximum allowed level of 1mg/L, contravening the Water Pollution Control Act (水污染防治法), he said.
Further investigation is needed to determine whether soil and groundwater at the 11 locations have been polluted, he said, adding that the suspects would be required to remove the waste from the sites after the judicial investigation is completed.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching