What was all the fuss about? The affair has a long history. Kaohsiung city has been pouring its municipal waste into the Hsichingpu landfill for ten years. Nearby residents have been suffering from the effects of air and ground-water pollution, the results of poor landfill design and management. Their frustrations first boiled over in December 1990, when Kaohsiung city government continued using the landfill even though its lease of the site had expired. On that occasion the residents contented themselves with staging a record 37-day demonstration.
To appease their anger, Mayor Wu promised that the city government would stop using the landfill by the end of 1995. He believed that Kaohsiung would have its own incinerators by that time. What he could not foresee was that the plan to build them would be killed by a budget boycott on the part of the city council. Five years later, Mayor Wu’s promise was viewed in the same light as one of the non-existent incinerators’ products—so much hot air—and local residents took to the barricades.
The decade-long fight over Hsichingpu landfill is just the tip of an iceberg. At the beginning of this year, the residents of Sanhsia township in Taipei county blockaded the entry to the Tantze landfill in an attempt to bar industrial waste from neighboring Panchiao. And in April, residents of Hsinshe rural township tried to stop the ongoing construction of a sanitary landfill there, arguing that it would pollute nearby Tachia River, which runs uncomfortably close to the reservoir that provides Taichung with most of its water. Similar protests have been seen all around the island.
Two-thirds of Taiwan’s landfills are approaching or already at full capacity. Only five out of the twenty-two incinerators planned by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) have been constructed and are in operation. Seven more are currently under construction, and the EPA hopes to award contracts for another six by the end of this year, but the problem of garbage disposal is not going to disappear overnight. It takes at least three or four years to build an incinerator, two years to construct a sanitary landfill, and six months to build an emergency landfill. More fights over garbage disposal can be expected as spring melts into a long, hot, and malodorous summer.
EPA statistics reveal that 8.5 million tons of household waste were generated in 1994. More than 80 percent of the annual output is treated at some 300 landfills and 5 incinerators currently in operation. According to Chen Yeong-ren(陳永仁), director-general of the EPA’s Bureau of Waste Management (BWM), the remaining 20 percent is either illegally dumped into a nearby river, or simply left to rot in mountain gullies. The fact is that Taiwan’s landfills and incinerators simply cannot accommodate the estimated 23,000 tons of household waste generated every day around the island.
Why has the household waste problem been allowed to degenerate into such a mess? Chen admits that the government is partly to blame. “In the past, the government invested very little in waste treatment,” he says. “The technology was backward and landfill management was poor. The result was serious secondary pollution at most landfill sites, [which lack a proper lining to prevent seepage into the soil].”
A number of factors cause residents to rise up against any plan to build new sanitary landfills or incinerators. They have had bad experiences with secondary pollution. They have no faith in the government’s ability to solve the problems. And they are all too familiar with the typical quality of public construction work. The result is a vicious circle: Most landfills are approaching full capacity, the government’s plans to construct sanitary landfills and incinerators meet with constant opposition, so the ever-increasing amount of household waste has no place to go.
Past failure to implement long-term urban planning in this small but densely populated island is another factor that has made it very difficult for operators to acquire land for sanitary landfills or incinerators. This is especially true of cities. “In the past,” Chen says, “the government didn't zone land for building public facilities, such as landfills, incinerators, and power substations. That might have been all right two or three decades ago, when household waste was mostly composted. But urban development has taken off, and old notions of urban planning no longer meet the public’s needs.”
Lin Hsi-tah, who has been chief of Tahsi township since 1990, knows just how difficult it is to buy real estate for use as a landfill. Tahsi is a pleasant scenic spot southwest of Taipei. The late President Chiang Ching-kuo is buried there, and President Lee Teng-hui and Premier Lien Chan have both recently purchased houses nearby. In the early years of this century, Tahsi was a prosperous mercantile town, and ships could get there by navigating the Tamsui River.
Since 1977, the township has been dumping its household waste—untreated—into a gully. This accumulation of raw waste naturally created air and water pollution. Residents protested. The landfill was fast approaching capacity. As soon as Lin took office in 1990 he began thinking of ways to buy neighboring land to enlarge the existing landfill. All he wanted was around 10 hectares. His first task, and major headache, was finding a way to bring all interested government agencies together to cooperate in a feasibility study.
Lin is eloquent about the problems he faced. “Because the land we wanted is woodland, we have to have the approval of the Provincial Taiwan Forestry Bureau,” he says. “The land is also slopeland, therefore we need the nod from the Provincial Water Conservancy Bureau. It's zoned as farmland, which means we have to have a meeting with the Provincial Department of Agriculture and Forestry. Some of the land belongs to the central government, so that brings in the National Property Bureau to comment on the lease. We have to get representatives from a dozen government agencies to meet together on the same day, which is extremely difficult, so that they can evaluate the project’s feasibility and make sure it won’t cause a public hazard or endanger the hydrographic net.”
Years went by before the various government agencies gave Tahsi township the go-ahead, before the township persuaded the majority of the landowners to sell the land, and before all the interested parties could agree on a price. The county and provincial governments agreed to subsidize the land acquisition and allocated funds. And then, at a stroke, Tahsi’s town council froze the project by slashing the land-acquisition budget to one dollar. A councilor filed suit against Lin, accusing him of abusing public money in purchasing private land, and putting family interests above public duty. Although Lin was subsequently acquitted of all charges, six years have gone by and the plan to expand the landfill has still not been implemented.
As Tahsi’s old landfill has now reached capacity, the township is obliged to spend US$926,000 a year on employing a private waste-collection company to carry away the garbage generated over the twelve-month period—all 25,000 tons of it. A dozen other townships in Taiwan are in the same boat. Lin sees it as a total waste of money. With that kind of cash and the subsidies from the county and provincial governments, he could have gone ahead and bought the land needed for the landfill. “Taiwan’s garbage problem is a man-made disaster, not a natural one,” he emphasizes.
Edward M.Y. Wu (吳明洋), commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, Kaohsiung city, holds similar views. “The administration couldn’t get the public support it needed,” he says. “That’s our country’s problem. All Kaohsiung city councilors are well educated; they know that the only way to solve the garbage problem is to build incinerators. But they boycott the budget for political reasons. They claim they have to do it, because their constituents are op posed.”
Wu’s comments highlight an important point—Taiwan’s waste problems are not simply the result of lack of governmental foresight and administrative efficiency, or of the public’s distrust of public construction projects. Vested-interest groups often obstruct waste disposal and treatment plans for political or economic reasons.
Industrial waste poses an even greater problem. According to EPA statistics, each year Taiwan’s industries generate an estimated 15 million tons of industrial waste, of which 650,000 tons are rated as hazardous. Approximately 30 percent of this is properly treated, either through a waste minimization program introduced by a task force jointly set up by the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) and the BWM, or through hospital incinerators that treat medical waste. The remaining 70 percent is either dumped illegally, or goes into landfills designed to take household waste As a result, a considerable number of such landfills have reached capacity before their time.
Much of the blame for this lies with Taiwan’s legal framework and the limited scale of most of the island’s waste disposal enterprises. The Solid Waste Disposal Act stipulates that it is the local government’s responsibility to dispose of household waste, whereas industries have a duty either to get rid of their own waste or commission licensed waste collection or waste-treatment companies to do it for them. But there are problems with this. Most private enterprises have limited capitalization, and so are incapable of disposing of ordinary industrial waste, let alone hazardous industrial waste. Waste treatment facilities are expensive. Some basic-package treatment facilities, such as those for treating fish parts biologically, cost tens of thousands of US dollars. For sophisticated facilities, capable of handling hazardous waste such as organic solvents, the price can be astronomical.
Since the cost of such facilities often exceeds their capitalization, small-and medium-sized enterprises often go in for illegal dumping, hoping not to get caught. If they are caught, the resulting fine will be much less than the cost of buying proper treatment facilities. Besides, the chances of detection are slim, since environmental-protection authorities lack the manpower to make enough surprise inspections.
Such irresponsible practices can have fatal consequences. In November 1994, a worker was killed and another injured while dumping construction waste at a site in Kaohsiung county. They inadvertently broke open a barrel of hazardous waste that had been buried illegally, and inhaled poisonous gas.
To solve the industrial waste problem, the IDB and the EPA are pushing for a joint waste treatment system program. The idea is to encourage factories that produce industrial waste to pool funds and set up treatment facilities. Two or three systems have already been established, involving such diverse by-products as fish parts, printed circuit boards, and tannery waste. Several more systems, such as an electric arc furnace that treats waste steel, are on the drawing board.
There are other promising initiatives. About thirteen years ago, the IDB commissioned a non-profit foundation, China Technical Consultants, Inc., to set up the Industrial Pollution Control Corps, later renamed the Industrial Pollution Control Center. The purpose of this organization is to integrate technologies of pollution control from Taiwan and abroad, and then promote these technologies in factories. And November 1995 saw the establishment of the National Center for Cleaner Production which, as its name suggests, promotes clean production methods.
The most serious problem of all is the treatment of hazardous waste. Almost none of the twenty-five licensed waste treatment companies currently in operation are capable of handling it. The problem lies not in the technology but, once again, in the cost. “The private sector is unwilling to invest in treatment companies, especially where hazardous waste is involved, because the economic incentive simply isn’t there,” says BWM director Chen Yeong-ren. “Private-sector companies won’t put up the money unless they can see a guaranteed profit.” However, local governments, which have the power to issue construction and operating licenses, often insist on tiresome bureaucratic procedures that discourage private investors.
If the private sector is reluctant, is government intervention a better solution? “I don’t know how many hazardous waste treatment centers are needed,” Chen admits, “but we must have at least one. The government may have to find a way of guaranteeing that if an investor sets up a hazardous waste treatment plant, he will have a continuous supply of raw material and a profit at the end of the day.”
But guaranteeing a supply of waste material is not without its problems. Lin Chih-sen(林志森), a divisional director in the IDB, has reservations, largely because of past experience with Taiwan industries’ propensity for rapid change. Many factories have followed the IDB’s advice and altered their production technology, as well as the materials they use. “The IDB has a treatment center in Taichung that handles high-concentration waste electroplating liquid,” he says. “It can treat between one and two tons of this cyanide compound a day. At the beginning, we felt it probably didn’t have enough capacity. Now we can’t get the raw waste for treatment. Many factories have given up using such compounds in electroplating, because the government’s tightened up controls on cyanide products.”
In addition, overseas competition is starting to play a role. According to one IDB official, the Japanese are buying waste sawdust from Taiwan. This is going to put local recovery plants, such as the Cheng-chang Wood Company in Chingshui, out of business, because they will no longer be able to acquire enough waste.
Lin also points out problems at the government level. “This is an islandwide problem,” he says. “Administrative efficiency is at a low ebb. Civil servants are afraid of taking responsibility for anything. And our legal system is complicated. Anybody who dared take responsibility would be the first to be put in jail. You can’t blame individual civil servants. Government officials are afraid of being accused of peddling influence.”
And then there are shortsighted objections from residents. Some do it just to be difficult. Others genuinely see their interests under threat. Lin raises the example of Asian Cement Co. to illustrate this point. The EPA awarded the company a contract for the treatment of waste tires. Asian Cement invested US$1.1 million in rotary kiln recycling technology, used in many advanced countries. But the plan was killed after a series of protests led by a consortium of environmental groups and people with a vested interest in recycling tires. According to Lin, during the energy crisis of the seventies, many of Taiwan’s factories used heat produced by incinerating waste tires as an alternative source of energy.
Some of these stories have happy endings. The Hsichingpu landfill dispute recently resolved itself when Edward M.Y. Wu, of Kaohsiung city’s Department of Environmental Protection, at last managed to persuade city councilors that incinerators are safe. The council has approved a budget for two incinerators, and resulting contracts worth hundreds of millions of US dollars have been awarded to two German companies.
Tahsi township chief Lin His-tah, on the other hand, is still waiting for a miracle. He believes that the town council is insisting on impossible terms. “There’s no way the issue can be resolved through negotiations,” he says. “All I can do is pray that those councilors will find consciences from somewhere, listen to them, and approve the budget soon.”