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.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and Chunghwa Telecom yesterday confirmed that an international undersea cable near Keelung Harbor had been cut by a Chinese ship, the Shunxin-39, a freighter registered in Cameroon. Chunghwa Telecom said the cable had its own backup equipment, and the incident would not affect telecommunications within Taiwan. The CGA said it dispatched a ship under its first fleet after receiving word of the incident and located the Shunxin-39 7 nautical miles (13km) north of Yehliu (野柳) at about 4:40pm on Friday. The CGA demanded that the Shunxin-39 return to seas closer to Keelung Harbor for investigation over the
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST) yesterday promised it would increase oversight of use of Chinese in course materials, following a social media outcry over instances of simplified Chinese characters being used, including in a final exam. People on Threads wrote that simplified Chinese characters were used on a final exam and in a textbook for a translation course at the university, while the business card of a professor bore the words: “Taiwan Province, China.” Photographs of the exam, the textbook and the business card were posted with the comments. NKUST said that other members of the faculty did not see
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is to be released next month, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now. China has ramped up military activity close to Taiwan in the past few years, including massing naval forces around the nation. The game, titled 2045, tasks players with navigating the troubles of war using colorful action cards and role-playing as characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That includes members of the armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians
RSS