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By Chiu Yu-Tzu, TaiPei Times

TAIWAN, 21 February 2002 -- ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION:Although Taiwan may have resolved the controversy over shipping waste to the Solomon Islands, other environmental issues remain

Environmental organizations yesterday applauded moves to block a plan to ship hazardous industrial waste from Taiwan to the Solomon Islands, but other waste issues are far from resolved.

The EPA said on Tuesday that it would refuse to issue an export license for the planned shipment of 3 million tonnes of industrial waste to the Solomons in an effort to preserve Taiwan's image.

"This sends a clear signal to waste traders that their waste is not welcome here in the Pacific," a Greenpeace media release said yesterday.

However, another case involving Formosa Plastics Corporation and the shipment of toxic waste to Cambodia in 1998 has not been resolved.

Although environmental officials with the Kaohsiung County Government assured the public that more than 4,000 tonnes of mercury-tainted waste that was rejected by Cambodia would be treated by the end of this month, environmentalists now worry about a way to deal with left-over residue.

Officials said yesterday that the residue has been examined by the National Institute of Environmental Analysis under the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and classified as non-hazardous waste, which may either be reused as material for producing tiles for construction use or dumped in landfills.

"We believe that the company will choose the best way to treat the estimated 2,400 tonnes of residue and that the government will monitor the follow-up," Tsai Mong-yue , deputy director of Kaohsiung County's Bureau of Environmental Protection, told the Taipei Times.

Once the treatment of mercury-tainted waste is complete, Tsai said, it would be a good time to publicize the news to eliminate long-held public misunderstandings.

Formosa Plastics was involved in a controversy pertaining to the illegal dumping of hazardous industrial waste in 1998, when it shipped 2,700 tonnes of mercury-tainted waste under the label of construction waste to Cambodia.

Cambodia succumbed to international pressure and shipped the waste -- along with the soil it had contaminated, totalling 4,600 tonnes -- back to Taiwan in 1999.

Environmentalists at that time criticized the company for lacking social responsibility and took aim at the government's loose management of industrial waste. Activists with the Green Formosa Front even filed a lawsuit against Formosa Plastics and the waste handler involved. The case has not yet been resolved.

In the wake of the international scandal, the company installed a heat-recovery system early last year at its factory in Jenwu County , Kaohsiung County, and began to treat the unloaded 4,107 tonnes of mercury-tainted waste in September.

According to environmental inspectors who visited the factory yesterday, the remaining 300 tonnes of waste would be treated in the following days.

"We feel that Formosa Plastics has been doing the job with sincerity and hopefully they will treat other similar waste with the same attitude," said an environmental inspector, who declined to be identified.

At the Formosa Plastics' factory in Chienjen , Kaohsiung City, about 1,200 tonnes of mercury-tainted waste has been stored for at least 15 years.

The official, however, said that Formosa Plastics should reinstall the heat-recovery system at the site in Chienjen to avoid any controversy resulting from the transportation of hazardous industrial waste from Kaohsiung City to Kaohsiung County.

When 4,600 tonnes of mercury-tainted waste was to be shipped to Jenwu in June 2000, angry residents blocked roads to express their opposition against treating toxic waste near their homes.

Formosa Plastics' attitude has changed with time. Officials said the company expressed its wish to carry out the first ever related R&D in Taiwan in the near future to turn the estimated 2,400 tonnes of residue into tiles for use at its other factories.

The plan was actually inspired by the EPA, which, at a meeting held last September, encouraged the company to reuse the residue.

Environmentalists, however, said that the EPA should not have regarded the Formosa Plastics case as unique and have given the wrongdoer a way out.

"Rather, the EPA should seize the chance to establish a standard operating procedure for managing hazardous industrial waste," Green Formosa Foundation chairman Wu Tung-Jye said.

"If Formosa Plastics is allowed to do that, does it mean that residue collected from incinerators where industrial waste was burnt would also be turned into materials which could be used anywhere on the island?" Wu asked.

Wu argued that the potential danger posed by residue left after the treatment of hazardous waste should not be ignored.

The lack of final depositories for industrial waste has troubled the EPA for years and offered a reason for the existence of more than 170 illegal dumping sites in Taiwan.

In addition, environmentalists criticized the EPA's changing definition of hazardous industrial waste, saying it would make treating waste more difficult.

According to Leu Horng-guang, director-general of the EPA's Bureau of Solid Waste Management, chemical solvents generated in industrial complexes could now be burnt in incinerators because they are no longer regarded as hazardous. Lu said the EPA can now track 80 percent of the 1.5 million tonnes of hazardous industrial waste generated annually in Taiwan.

But environmentalists contest that claim.

"Think about the heavily polluted sludge in rivers, how can the EPA be so certain that the situation is under control?" Wu said, adding that pollution generated by illegal factories could be an even bigger and invisible problem.