The Hualien County Environmental Protection Bureau yesterday sampled wastewater from an outflow pipe at Chung Hwa Pulp Corp’s Hualien paper mill, after receiving complaints from residents that the facility discharged substandard wastewater into the Hualien River (花蓮溪), turning it into a tawny color.
Bureau officials took four samples which are to be tested for apparent color, suspended solids concentration, chemical oxygen demand and conductivity by laboratories certified by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA). The results are expected to be released in two weeks.
Aside from the turbid outflow, residents also cited a “rancid” smell, allegedly coming from the facility’s chimneys.
Chung Hwa Pulp senior specialist Yen Shih-hsiung (顏世雄) said the brownish-yellow substance that colored the river is lignin, a product dissolved from wood chips when making pulp.
He said that although wastewater from the facility is properly processed and bleached before it is discharged, it is impossible to remove lignin completely.
He denied allegations that the plant dumped substandard wastewater over the holiday period, saying that the site’s outflow is properly treated and bleached, with monitoring data to prove it.
Bureau Director-General Jao Chung (饒忠) said that residents had often complained that the firm had dumped illegal discharge during holidays or early morning to avoid scrutiny.
However, since a wastewater monitoring system was installed by the paper mill in December last year, the bureau has not found any abnormalities in the facility’s effluent, he said.
Measurements taken at the outflow pipe, updated every two hours, found the quality of the plant’s effluent to be normal over the holiday period, and results of relative accuracy test audits — which Chung Hwa Pulp administered on an EPA order, to control measurement accuracy within an acceptable margin of error — have indicated that all of the plant’s discharge conforms to EPA standards, Jao said.
He said that rivers across the nation are in their low-flow period, which might have caused wastewater discharge from the plant to look darker, as there is less water in the river to dilute it.
Under the Water Pollution Control Act (水汙染防治法), the apparent color of industrial wastewater cannot exceed 550, based on an index. The outflow from the facility ranges between 350 and 450, Jao said.
On the alleged air pollution caused by the facility, he said that the bureau has been in talks with the company over installing an emissions monitoring system inside its chimneys.
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