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By Chiu Yu-Tzu, Taipei Times

TAIWAN, 24 September 2002 --A deal being negotiated between the government and the Formosa Plastics Corp would leave taxpayers footing half the NT$250 million bill to clean up mercury-tainted waste discovered in Pingtung County in 1999, environmentalists said yesterday.

"Solving the controversy in this way violates social justice," Eric Liou , secretary-general of the Environmental Quality Protection Foundation, told the Taipei Times.

According to Liou, negotiations between the Pingtung County Government and Formosa Plastics might soon result in an agreement for both sides to share the costs of cleaning up the site in Hsinyuan township and processing the waste at Formosa's plants.

"So it turns out that Formosa gets a good deal instead of punishment for the illegal dumping it is involved in," said Liou, who also served as a member of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) task force established to investigate Formosa's attempts to ship mercury-tainted waste abroad.

In 1998, Formosa shipped 2,700 tonnes of toxic waste to Cambodia, where it was improperly disposed of.

Following international pressure, Formosa shipped the waste -- along with 1,900 tonnes of soil it had contaminated in Cambodia -- back to Taiwan in 1999.

Following the scandal, environmentalists criticized the government for failing to properly monitor hazardous industrial waste and urged the EPA to trace existing waste.

Several illegal dumps were discovered in 1999, one of which was the one in Hsinyuan.

The government has been considering what to do with the 8,200 tonnes of mercury-tainted waste and 30,000 tonnes of sludge contaminated with other heavy metals at the site.

The Pingtung County Government asked for NT$50 million in compensation from Formosa to seal the waste in containers.

However, Formosa rejected the claim, saying it was not the source of the waste, and filed a lawsuit against the county government for accusing it without evidence. According to environmental officials, the Kaohsiung High Administrative Court encouraged the parties to come to a arrangement and set a Oct. 1 deadline.

"We actually want to see Formosa take back all of its waste and treat it by itself," said a Pingtung County Government environmental official, who declined to be identified.

Sources close to the negotiations said that if there is no interference, the EPA would give the county government at least half of the NT$250 million clean-up costs.

Formosa, meanwhile, would offer heat-recovery machines and manpower to process the waste as its part of the deal.

Lin Sheng-kuan, spokesman for Formosa Plastics Corp, told the Taipei Times yesterday that the company had nothing to do with the waste.

"We will propose a two-month extension to the negotiations not only to make things clearer but also to avoid being misunderstood," Lin said, adding that the situation would not be clear until December.

Formosa installed a heat-recovery system early last year at its plant in Jenwu township, Kaohsiung County.

In September it began to treat 4,107 tonnes of mercury-tainted waste rejected by Cambodia. The waste was completely treated by March this year.

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