The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) is neglecting pollution in Changhua County’s Dadu River Estuary Wildlife Refuge, lawmakers said yesterday.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Sue-ying (黃淑英) told a press conference that the 3 hectare refuge was one of the most important wetlands in Asia, but that it had been polluted, threatening the ecosystem and humans.
Huang said she had informed the EPA about the problem and was told it suspected that the pollution consists of coal ash and flue dust, fine particles of metal emitted by a smelter.
She said the EPA had shirked its responsibilities by blaming the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ River Management Office for the problem.
He Jiane-rin (何建仁), an EPA section chief, said the agency had used the word “suspected” because the official results of inspections had yet to be determined. However, he said it was confirmed yesterday that the refuge was polluted by toxic industrial waste, he added.
The agency would work with the River Management Office to clean up the waste, he said.
“We will also inspect the soil and groundwater,” He said. “If they are found to be contaminated, we will place the refuge under our supervision.”
Huang Huan-chang (黃煥彰), an associate professor at Chunghua University of Medical Technology’s department of nursing, said the dioxin in the soil was 2.5 times normal values.
“Pollutants in the earth spread through the water in the Dadu River as the tides ebb and flow,” Huang Huan-chang said. “Mudskippers, fiddler crab and oysters have to live in an environment filled with flue dust.”
Green Party Taiwan spokesperson Pan Han-shen (潘翰聲) said the EPA and local environmental protection bureaus had failed to protect the environment, allowing poisonous substances into the food chain.
“Steel and electroplating plants are a cancer for the land in Taiwan,” he said. “Now the cancer cells have got out of hand and spread.”
“Like a failed immune system, the environmental bureaus didn’t do their job,” Pan said.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
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