Representatives of the Greater Taichung Administration Monitoring Alliance yesterday accused the local government of trying to conceal the truth about groundwater pollution near the shuttered Shuinan Airport (水湳機場) in Greater Taichung.
“Delinquent mayor should be severely punished by the Control Yuan,” alliance members chanted during the protest in front of the Control Yuan.
The group said that tests of the soil at the airport, which was shut down in 2004, showed that it was contaminated with heavy metals and electrical insulating oil. The protesters accused the local government of trying to hide the truth from people living near the area because of its plans to turn the old airport into the site of its Taichung Gateway Park City project — which will include a dome, an exhibition and convention center, and a college town.
Photo: CNA
Alliance member Gan Chen-yi (甘宸宜) said the state of pollution at the airport was contained in a report by the local environmental protection agency last year, which said the contaminated area spanned 7,648m2 and was about 5m in depth.
She said the group suspected the Greater Taichung Government knew about the pollution even earlier, as the report by the local agency was a re-inspection of the site and cited data from another report on the state of contamination done by the Environmental Protection Administration in 2009.
The alliance accused the municipal government of hiding the conditions at the airport from Greater Taichung Council so councilors would approve the Taichung Gateway Park City’s development budget for last year and this year.
When councilors questioned Greater Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) about the case this month, Gan said Hu replied that he only found out about the pollution two or three weeks before.
The alliance added that the groundwater at the Han Xiang Aerospace Industrial Development Corp’s factory, located right next to Shuinan Airport’s runway, was verified to be contaminated by trichloroethylene — a toxic chemical compound.
“We suspect that all the groundwater in the nearby area could be contaminated, despite the [environmental protection] agency’s statement that only the water at the factory site and the soil at the airport are contaminated,” Taiwan Academy of Ecology secretary-general Tsai Chih-hao (蔡智豪) said.
According to the agency’s report for the city council in June, the trichloroethylene level in the groundwater at Situn Elementary School located near the airport reached 0.029mg/L — higher than the standards set for drinking water at 0.005mg/L. The agency notified the elementary school not to drink the water and to guard against exposure to the groundwater.
The protesters called on the municipal government “to honestly tell the public how long they have known about the pollution and how much the nearby residents have been affected by the polluted water.”
“If harm has been done to the residents, then the government should apologize and resolve the problem,” Tsai 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
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
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