Prosecutors crack down on Taipei water pollution

Led by prosecutors, around 100 police officers and construction workers used several heavy-duty excavators and earth movers to dig a pond and a strip of land in the area between the factory and river.

So far they have found nine steel pipes with a radius of one meter buried as deep as four to five meters underground.

The concealed pipes run as long as 500 meters toward the Sanxia River, a tributary stream of the Dahan River.

Officials at the Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB) of the Taipei County Government were shocked by the extensive pollution operations.

They along with police booked 20 workers for questioning and gathering evidence.

After receiving a tip, the officials worked out a plan to catch the culprits, including sending divers into the river to pinpoint the exact locations of the existing pipe mouths.

The factory is owned by a well established building materials firm named Yufung which was set up in 1966.

This was the second pollution case related to gravel suppliers and river water in the county this month.

Taipei County Magistrate Chou Hsi-wei instructed the EPB to call a meeting with all of the 29 registered gravel suppliers in the county to give them a stern warning against dumping reprocessed waste water into any rivers.

In addition to helping the building materials suppliers improve their pollution control facilities, the local government plans to sharply increase penalties for violations of the regulations.

The new measures will include daily fines as high as NT$136.5 million for a polluter that releases 1,000 cubic meters of polluted water into any of the rivers, said Chou.

He said the money for the fines will be used to help cover the costs of environmental rehabilitation.

Teng Jia-ji, chief of the EPB, said the county government has poured in hundreds of million of dollars to clean up the river water.

For the Dahan River alone, the budget allocated this year reaches NT$600 million.

The EPB will not be lenient toward the lawbreakers, Teng said.

He said the EPB has regularly sent its staff disguised as joggers, bikers or hikers to inspect major rivers and their tributaries. But the manpower is still rather limited.

In order to help monitor and prevent water pollution acts, the EPB will encourage heads of villages and communities in the county to assign their existing neighborhood security patrol teams to help catch polluters, he said.

Teng said cash awards will be given to those who have helped gather evidences that lead to formal investigation and arrest of polluters.

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