It was the early 1960s in the United States before water pollution became a widely recognized problem. Until then, few people worried much about water quality. Then, the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio. Suddenly the country had a clear image of what wholesale dumping of untreated sewage and industrial wastes can do to a waterway. Coupled with Silent Spring, Rachel Carson's landmark 1962 book condemning the use of pesticides hazardous to wildlife, this led to a turning point in public opinion. Clean water could no longer be taken for granted: pollution posed a danger to nursing mothers as well as to nesting birds. The American environmental movement soon shifted into high gear. People and groups pushed the government to force polluters into changing their ways.
Nevertheless, it was 1972 before the U.S. Clean Water Act first put industries and sewage treatment plants on notice that the government would start rigorously checking their point-source pollution. Even then, non-specific sources of pollution, such as fertilizer and pesticide runoff from fields were not yet covered by law. It has taken decades to regulate and repair waterways from Lake Erie to the Rio Grande. And the success rate is still mixed-E. coli and its effluent friends are costly to clean up. The chances are strong, however, that the U.S. government would have done much less about water pollution if that river hadn't caught fire and galvanized public opinion.
There's nothing like a well-publicized disaster to change public awareness. When life magazine published a jolting photo essay on the many families in Minamata, Japan, who were taking care of relatives born with grotesquely deforming neurological disorders as a result of contaminated seafood, people could no longer insist that there was no problem. The ravages of mercury poisoning on human beings were given a new name: Minamata disease. And the industrial pollution as well as the lack of government regulation that caused it-despite years of denial-was finally forced to an end.
One is tempted to think that the impact of a disaster like Cuyahoga or Minamata
raises awareness in other places. But the recent environmental news from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union fails to substantiate such a view. Even non-communist Europe was late to experience the rise of a Green movement. And Asia is no exception, as pointed out by recent environmental reports from mainland China, such as Vaclav Snil's The Bad Earth.
Will Taiwan need a major disaster before the public pays serious attention to the island's water quality issues? Will it have to have its own equivalent of a Minamata or a Cuyahoga River fire? The answer isn't in yet.
In Taiwan, the laws and the enforcement mechanisms concerning water pollution are becoming steadily more sophisticated. But it is easier for political and economic will to congeal if lawmakers are supported by people and non-governmental organizations that are concerned enough about water quality to support regulation and punishment of polluters. The extent of the problem is so great, and appears so hopeless, that a dangerous public inertia still has to be overcome.
When a problem seems immense, such as cleaning up rivers that have become little better than open sewers, it is a natural human tendency to give up on doing anything about it. The wastewater treatment task is indeed huge: only 3 percent of the domestic sewage is treated before it flows into a waterway, and pig waste more than doubles the daily volume produced by the island's 21 million people. Add industrial effluents, agricultural pesticide and fertilizer runoff, and dumping of hazardous wastes and garbage, and the problem does seem intractable.
Not so. Big problems are an amalgamation of many small ones. One key to overcoming polluted water is the realization that every person's actions count. Cleaning up the huge watershed that drains into a major river like the Keelung, which oozes through Taipei, may seem hopeless. But not if one starts with the farmers along upstream tributaries, or even with household choices about which detergent to use for washing clothes. The largest watershed is made up of countless small watersheds. Start cleaning up the small ones, and the health of the larger one is improved.
And the smaller the watershed environment, the more intimate it becomes. People necessarily interact. It is easier for farmers, pig raisers, factory owners, and homeowners near the same stream or drainage ditch to see results from their efforts-and also identify who isn't cooperating. Increased peer pressure can have a major impact on pollution at its source, a fact environmentalists elsewhere have used to their advantage. It can happen here.
If one Taipei county pig farmer refuses to turn on the pumps in his waste treatment facility in order to save on electricity, his neighbors will know about it and can apply pressure to do so. This is already happening to those farmers surrounded by suburban high-rise apartments. But if pig raisers away from urban areas all want to save on electricity, not much will happen. This is where public awareness and law enforcement intersect to overcome the inertia on pollution control.
Political will is not enough. The government alone cannot clean up waterways, no matter how good the laws and aggressive the enforcement. No law can be enforced if the majority refuse to obey it. It takes popular pressure, not just legal pressure, to make a difference. Parents are already finding that some of that pressure is coming from their own kids. Successful environmental awareness programs can be found in many elementary schools, and some of the most effective environmentalists are teachers. This is a beginning, and enough to create some positive momentum. But public commitment to improving water quality is still inadequate. Not enough people realize that wasting time on this issue is hazardous to the health. It shouldn't require a disaster to drive that point home. ■