A task force has been set up to investigate alleged soil pollution at the Hsieh-ho Power Plant site in Keelung, the Ministry of Environment said on Thursday.
The task force’s soil and water specialists, alongside Keelung Environmental Protection Department personnel, would conduct on-site inspections, the ministry said.
The Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Act (土壤及地下水污染整治法) regulates only land use activities, not regional development, so the review process would be not be conducted according to the stipulations of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法), although environmentalists asserted otherwise, the ministry said.
Photo: Lu Hsien-hsiu, Taipei Times
In 2019, the power plant was removed from a list of supervised sites after 15 months of pollution remediation, it said.
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) on Dec. 6, 2019, commissioned SGS Taiwan to conduct sampling and testing of soil from the site after the scope of environmental impact assessments for a project to convert the oil-fired power plant into a gas-fired power plant was approved by the ministry on June 19, 2019, the ministry said.
Petroleum hydrocarbon and heavy metal concentrations were found to be within acceptable limits, it added.
However, self-initiated soil testing by Taipower in slides provided by a whistle-blower was conducted about a year later on Nov. 6, 2020, the ministry said.
At a meeting on Feb. 26, environmental impact assessment committee members assessed documents on the alleged soil pollution provided by environmentalists and asked Taipower to report on self-initiated testing conducted since 2019, the ministry said.
The committee passed the assessment with all issues fully discussed and a consensus reached among the 17 members, the ministry said, adding that the review process was administratively compliant and did not involve procedural injustice.
According to Article 17 of the Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Act, land use activities, including “development acts prescribed in the Environmental Impact Assessment Act,” should be prohibited within a soil and groundwater pollution control zone.
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