Taiwan Today

‘Deteriorating Water Qual­ity: Mother Nature’s Revenge” screamed one down-island newspaper headline last summer. “Our Water Con­tains Heavy Metals, Including Lead,” warned another. The reports left residents of Kaohsiung city unwilling to use their tap water and made bottled water a big business during the drought of 1993, and beyond.

One year ago this month, Taiwan was in the midst of the worst drought in forty years. As the dry spell progressed, rivers and reservoirs—the island’s vital sources of fresh water—dwindled danger­ously, causing water quality to deteriorate as well. In covering the crisis, reporters repeatedly used Kaohsiung as their case study of a city with poor water quality. City residents followed the reports closely, and acted on them. A poll con­ducted last summer by the city’s Environ­mental Protection Department (EPD) showed that, despite government claims that the tap water was safe, 40 percent of residents bought bottled water for cook­ing and drinking. They no longer trusted their tap water, even after boiling it.

One group that followed the news reports especially carefully was the Environmental Protection Mothers, a non-profit organization consisting mostly of Kaohsiung homemakers with school-age children. “When we heard water company officials were recommending that Kao­hsiung lower its inspection standards for water quality, that really did it. That trig­gered our anger,” says Chou Chun-ti (周春娣), who established the group in 1990. Chou explains that there are three sets of water standards in Taiwan: one for Taipei, a lower one for Kaohsiung, and an even lower level for the rest of the island. “Our water standard is already below Taipei’s, and they didn’t even want to main­tain that level!” Chou exclaims. She believes Kaohsiung’s water is already among the worst on the island. “People say we are luckier than rural residents, but that’s not true,” she says. “Although rural water standards are lower than ours, their untreated water quality is actually much, much better.”

When the EP Mothers took their com­plaints to the press, the water company, and the mayor’s office, they got results. Their first mission was to convince elementary and junior high schools to re­move their hot- and cold-water drinking fountains. In a June 1993 study of the wa­ter quality at fifty checkpoints around Kaohsiung, samples at twelve stations showed unsafe levels of trihalomethane, a gas that forms as a result of a high chlo­rine content. The gas is not considered a health hazard when water is boiled in an open container.

“At home, we can boil water, then open the pot lid to let the trihalomethane out,” Chou explains. “But our kids were drinking from closed water-boiling ma­chines at school.” The EP Mothers de­manded that schools switch back to providing drinking water the old-fashioned way: by filling thermoses with kitchen­ boiled water. By September, the city’s De­partment of Education agreed to comply.

The EP Mothers next took their com­plaints to the provincial government to demand that its water company, the Tai­wan Water Supply Corp., invest in new purification equipment and cut down on the chemicals used in treatment. “Some experts said our tap water was carrying cancer-causing agents and that trihalomethane was just one of them,” Chou says. “The company should know that these chemicals cause side effects.”

They also asked the city government to do a better job of controlling water pollution, especially livestock waste, industrial effluents, and domestic sewage. “We were especially concerned that they monitor the powerful petrochemical industries, which use a large amount of water and create a lot of pollution,” Chou says. “We were also concerned that our sewage system cannot handle the increasing amounts of domestic wastewater.”

One year later, the EP Mothers have seen some improvements. First, the Tai­wan Water Supply Corp. reduced the lev­els of trihalomethane in the local water supply. “We did it with the help of mod­ern technology,” says Lin Wen-huei (林文暉), vice district manager of the company. “In the past, we depended only on chlorine to treat raw water. After in­stalling new equipment, we have reduced its use.” Using a subsidy from the Envi­ronmental Protection Administration (EPA), Executive Yuan, the water com­pany upgraded its purification system with US$34 million in new water-treat­ment equipment.

The equipment was designed to im­prove the quality of Kaohsiung’s two largest reservoirs, Cheng-ching and Fengshan, and to beef up three of the city’s seven water treatment plants. New aeration equip­ment was installed in both reservoirs in August 1993 to reduce the amount of ammonium-nitro­gen and to combat eutrophication, or oxy­gen deficiency caused by algae. At two local water treatment plants, new facilities to clarify water and remove odors under­went final testing this spring, and one of the plants was also outfitted with addi­tional algae-removing equipment. A third treatment facility received equipment to absorb microorganisms and reduce am­monium-nitrogen.

The government is also focusing on renovating Kaohsiung’s water piping sys­tem, much of which is more than thirty years old. “Water quality often diminishes as it passes through the old pipes,” says Lin Wen-huei. “If they are rusty or leaky, unprocessed ground water leaks in and ru­ins the treated water.” The piping will be completely renewed under three central and provincial government projects. About one-third of the city’s pipes were replaced in 1992, under the first project. Additional sections will be replaced by the end of this year under a plan to separate industrial and residential water. The remaining sections will be replaced by mid-1995.

Despite these efforts, Kaohsiung’s water quality still suf­fers. Taiwan Water Supply still has difficulty maintaining a safe level of dissolved minerals, referred to as the Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) standard. According to Lin, Kaohsiung faces a natural difficulty because the city is built on limestone. “In such an environ­ment, the water contains more minerals,” he says. “In addition, being located along the seashore, saltwater often leaks into the ground water, polluting it and increasing the sodium content.”

Kaohsiung has been able to match­ Taipei’s standards for pH (a measure of acidity or alkalinity) and its level of trihalomethane, but still lags behind in other areas. “Pollution from farm waste gives our untreated water high levels of ammonium-nitrogen, which must be counteracted with heavy doses of chlo­rine,” explains Lin. “Taipei does not have this kind of problem.”

Lin stresses that the water company should not take all the blame for not meeting water standards, since the raw water it must treat is highly polluted. “A water company can only cope with the symptoms, not correct the source of a problem,” he says. “We have no power over polluters. All we can do is inform the authorities of violations. Our job is to make the best of the water we get.” He calls the untreated water supply “still manageable” but warns that if the quality continues to deteriorate, it may reach a level at which it can no longer be purified, even with the best technology.

Kaohsiung’s water supply comes mainly from the polluted Kaoping and Tungkang rivers. Livestock waste, espe­cially from pig and duck farms, makes up 50 percent of the pollution; the rest comes evenly from domestic and industrial efflu­ents. According to EPD tests, these pollut­ants are making their way into the city’s two main reservoirs. “So far, the untreated water hasn’t shown much improvement since last year,” says Shen Lung-chih (沈龍志), section chief of the Kaohsiung city EPD. Both reservoirs are eutrophic because the influx of organic nutrients, in this case from farm waste, has led to a proliferation of algae.

The city government has been taking more action against polluters operating within its administrative sphere. In May 1991, it adopted a permit system requiring all Kaohsiung companies that dis­charge wastewater to establish their own water treatment facility and to apply for a discharge permit by mid-1993. The EPD is now investigating applicants’ facilities to award or refuse permits by the middle of this year.

So far, the de­partment is pleased with the program. “We don’t just make rules and fine the violators,” says Liu Ming-che (劉明哲), EPD commissioner. “We speak directly with the factory owners before carry­ing out the plan. We hold meetings to explain the new rules and to tell owners about their social obligations.” Factories that don’t pass in­spection are fined from US$2,200 to $22,200; owners who fail to apply for a permit can face up to three years in prison. The city government is focusing on monitoring major polluters such as paper mills, petrochemical plants, machinery facto­ries, and food-processing plants.

But many of the most serious sources of pollution, Liu says, are outside the city limits. The Tungkang River originates in Pingtung county, and the Kaoping River runs through both Pingtung and Kao­hsiung counties. Monitoring wastewater in these waterways requires cooperation among the various city and county administrations involved because water must be collected and treated at several sites along the river routes. “Each administration can have its own plan, but these individual plans have to be compatible or the system won’t work,” Liu says.

To monitor pol­lution along the Tungkang and Kao­ping rivers, in 1992 central EPA and the local environmental protection departments in Kaohsiung and Pingtung counties formed a pollution investigation team. To­day, about thirty investigators patrol the two counties, taking water samples and re­porting the results to the appropriate local government, which then punishes violators.

“I think the various administrations have no conceptual differences—they all want to resolve the problem as quickly as possible,” Liu says. “The only difficulty is that different administrative spheres work under different priorities and budgets. The Kaohsiung county magistrate has gone to the river bank himself to catch ducks. This is an indication of his determination to deal with duck and pig raisers who disobey the laws.”

Another major source of pollution is Kaohsiung’s own household wastewater. Like most other cities in Taiwan, Kao­hsiung does not have a complete sewage system. The city began building a treat­ment plant only in 1979. Although the plant is operating, the piping system feed­ing into it is far from ready. Until this is completed, wastewater will be handled as it has been for generations—raw sewage is simply flushed out to sea. The city’s sewage treatment facility now processes about 400,000 tons of wastewater per day, about half the daily total produced. Even worse, on rainy days no sewage is treated because the central drainage channels must be opened to avoid flooding, and residential wastewater is no longer di­verted to the treatment plant.

Despite these major obstacles, Liu believes there is reason to be optimistic. “First, local governments are taking ac­tion,” he says. “Second, the quality of tap water has improved slightly in the last year. Water inspection reports testify to that.” The EPD now monitors Kaohsiung’s water at fifty checkpoints along the piping system. In June 1993, after the city in­creased its water quality standards slightly, twelve checkpoints failed the trihalomethane standard. In a second test in February 1994, none failed this test. But in those nine months, no progress was made in reducing the level of dissolved solids (TDS standard)—eleven checkpoints failed both times—and the number of sites failing to meet ammonium-nitro­gen standards actually increased, from three to eleven. Still, Liu argues that Kaohsiung’s tap water is now drinkable after boiling. “The TDS affects only taste, and ammonium-nitrogen doesn’t harm human health,” he says.

But the public is hard to convince. “If the water has passed inspection, theoretically, it is safe. But in reality, there is still a gap between safety and drinkability,” says Yu Yu-hua (於幼華), a professor of environmental engineering at National Tai­wan University. “Drinkability includes taste, smell, and appearance. A high level of dissolved minerals makes the water gritty. Too much chlorine makes it smell bad. If the untreated water is too polluted, it won’t look clear even after being treated. And all this has a psychological affect on the public. It reminds them about livestock pollution. Imagine thinking about that and trying to drink a glass of water! Objective reasoning says the water is safe; subjective reasoning says it is not.”

Yu says public apathy is part of the reason for continued water pollution. “Kaohsiung’s water quality has been deteriorating for the past fifteen years,” he says. But even though the public far outnumbers farmers, people have not protested farm pollution. “Not long ago, pig raisers protested at the Legislative Yuan asking offi­cials to reduce the standards of their waste management. But Kaohsiung residents have never protested or fought for better water quality,” Yu says. “They choose to mind their own business and just buy bot­tled water.”

Many physicians are concerned about this trend. Tseng Kuei-hai (曾貴海), a vice director of the Kaohsiung Christian Hospital, warns that the quality of bottled water varies widely depending on its source and the method of treatment. Only four of Taiwan’s estimated eighty bottled water companies have passed health inspections. “Mountain or spring water has no guarantee of safety,” he says. “Most vendors don’t apply for a permit to sell water, and because they move around a lot, the health department can’t monitor them. In truth, tap water is still the safest water to drink.”

But bottled water has secured a large market in Kaohsiung. Almost every street corner in the city features a distilled water vending machine where residents can pull up on a motor scooter, slip a NT$10 coin into a slot, and fill up their ten-liter water jugs. As an alternative, posters, bill­ boards, and signs plastered along the city streets announce where to buy “purified” water from a vendor. Restaurants entice customers by promising to use special water-purifying systems. On the southern outskirts of town, a half-mile-long stretch of water vendors lines the road enticing Kaohsiung residents to drive there regularly for “mountain” and “spring” water.

“I think bottled water tastes better than tap water,” says Lin Ching-hai (林清海), a 30-year-old owner of a com­puter hardware company. “But even with bottled water, I boil it before drinking. Our environment is heavily polluted. I can’t trust either kind of water.” His parents are even more particular. They buy distilled water for cooking, and mountain or spring water for making tea.

Other residents such as 29-year-old Lee Li-hua (李麗華) don’t trust any bot­tled water. Lee uses a US$1,200 home water-purifying system, which helps eliminate unpleasant smells, but has been expensive to maintain. She doesn’t want her parents to purchase mountain or spring water from street stands. “My parents say it has healing powers, but I don’t buy that,” she says. “Although the bottled water tastes better than tap water, I think tap water is actually safer. At least it is regularly examined.” But it will take much convincing before residents such as Lee drink straight tap water again. “People have lost faith in the water quality,” she says. “It is going to take some effort to win back their trust.”