The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday said tests showed chromium levels were within safe limits at the Miramar Resort Village at Taitung County’s Shanyuan Beach (杉原沙灘).
The tests were conducted following environmentalists’ claims that soil samples from the resort contained high levels of chromium.
On Wednesday, environmentalists said that the results of tests they had carried out showed that three of seven soil samples collected near the development site contained high levels of chromium — in some cases six times higher than permitted levels.
This led them to suspect that construction materials may have been contaminated, which may pose a risk to public health.
On the same day, Miramar said that soil tests that it had commissioned, conducted by an EPA-authorized lab, had shown levels of heavy metals in the soil were all within safe limits.
In response to questions at a meeting of the Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee at the legislature yesterday about the alleged soil pollution, EPA Minister Stephen Shen (沈世宏) said the agency’s latest test results showed no contamination.
Later in the afternoon, EPA Environmental Analysis Laboratory director-general Roam Guo-dong (阮國棟) said the administration had asked for the exact locations from which the environmentalists had obtained their samples, and sent inspection teams to collect samples from these locations on Wednesday.
“Five samples from a total of 12 samples collected at the site were sent to the laboratory for testing using two kinds of standard and precise methods in accordance with EPA regulations,” Roam said.
“The results showed the chromium level in the samples to be within safe limits,” he said.
The Miramar Resort Village has more than once been accused of violating the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法) in the past few years.
A Bureau of Environmental Inspection official said that the company had been reported by the bureau for violating the act seven times since 2006.
It had also been reported for violating water pollution control measures and its Environmental Impact Assessment.
However, the bureau had failed to uncover any violations during the inspection on Wednesday.
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The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) this morning went to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to “turn himself in” after being notified that he had failed to provide proof of having renounced his Chinese household registration. He was one of more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from China who were informed by the NIA that their Taiwanese citizenship might be revoked if they fail to provide the proof in three months, people familiar with the matter said. You said he has proof that he had renounced his Chinese household registration and demanded the NIA provide proof that he still had Chinese
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