The National Land Management Agency yesterday proposed solutions to speed up the removal of excess soil and rock from constructions sites, after a new policy governing the management of vehicles for removing excavated material triggered criticism from the construction industry.
The new policy, which took effect on Jan. 1, stipulates that GPS must be installed in machinery and vehicles to avert environmental degradation resulting from improper disposal of excavated soil and rock.
However, construction firms claimed that they were forced to suspend work, as their progress in removing excess soil and rock was hampered by a shortage of disposal sites.
Photo: Hsu Yi-ping, Taipei Times
About 4,260 vehicles have installed GPS, agency data showed.
The agency said that it is considering giving construction firms a grace period until the end of next month to change a Ministry of Environment GPS to that of the National Land Management Agency.
As of last month, the nation recorded about 36.86 million cubic meters of construction waste, of which 12.31 million cubic meters can be reused, agency data showed.
About 24.55 million cubic meters of soil and rock were delivered to storage and treatment facilities.
In addition, 69.14 million cubic meters of soil waste were sent to processing facilities, where it was mixed with other types of construction waste.
The agency yesterday hosted a news conference, in which it proposed to expand the number of final disposal sites and install temporary storage facilities nationwide.
The final disposal site from construction sites in Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung, Taoyuan and Hsinchu County would be at the Port of Taipei, which can store 30 million cubic meters, the agency said.
The port would only accept soil and rock from public construction projects, legal storage and treatment facilities, privately funded projects serving the public interest and those producing at least 50,000m3 of soil, it said.
The Taipei and New Taipei City governments are also planning to lease properties from the port to sort construction waste from urban development projects.
Temporary soil and rock storage and processing facilities in central Taiwan would be at the Port of Taichung and Changhua Coastal Industrial Park, the agency said.
The former, which can accommodate 2 million cubic meters of soil and rock, would be operational by the end of this year, while the latter would be able to accommodate 1 million cubic meters after an environmental impact assessment is complete.
Temporary disposal facilities for Chiayi County, Tainan and Kaohsiung would be in the zone designated for the South Star project in Kaohsiung and at the Port of Kaohsiung, which can accommodate approximately 7 million and 36.15 million cubic meters respectively, the agency said.
The former has begun to accept rock and soil, while the latter is scheduled to become operational by 2029, the agency said.
“Discussions about the policy began in 2024 and all construction firms were told in August last year that the new policy would be implemented as planned. However, most of the construction firms waited until last month to have GPS installed, which takes no more than three days to complete,” National Land Management Agency Director-General Wu Hsin-hsiu (吳欣修) said.
Wu said that it would take time for construction firms to change how they handle waste, which must be sorted at treatment facilities before being shipped to disposal sites.
Minister of Environment Peng Chi-ming (彭啟明) said that the central government is working with local government officials to set up more temporary storage facilities.
“We have identified sites with a total capacity of up to 150 million cubic meters,” Peng said.
National Federation of Real Estate and Construction Developers chairman Yang Yu-chuan (楊玉全) said that the government’s efforts have helped construction firms save time and money in processing excavated rock and soil.
While it is crucial for the Ministry of the Interior to increase the number of disposal sites, the government must also establish clear regulations that allow privately funded construction projects to trade reusable rock and soil, he said.
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