News article of the same event:
http://www.libertytimes.com.tw/2013/new/jul/12/today-taipei2.htm
this happened yesterday.
Jail time is needed for the cunts behind this; not the usual slap on the wrist because they have ‘connections’.
Dunno about that. The article suggests they could face fines of more than (gasp!) US$2000. Even (goodness!) as much as $20,000! That’ll show them. They won’t be doing that again in a hurry, I’ll bet. Assuming the EPA’s diligent investigations manage to find the culprit, of course, which may prove awfully difficult. I mean, if you have a vast blob of red dye in the water and a register of business operations in that area, it must still be, like, nearly impossible to find out where it came from. Two and a half cheers for the EPA.
Dunno about that. The article suggests they could face fines of more than (gasp!) US$2000. Even (goodness!) as much as $20,000! That’ll show them. They won’t be doing that again in a hurry, I’ll bet. Assuming the EPA’s diligent investigations manage to find the culprit, of course, which may prove awfully difficult. I mean, if you have a vast blob of red dye in the water and a register of business operations in that area, it must still be, like, nearly impossible to find out where it came from. Two and a half cheers for the EPA.[/quote]
Reminds me of when Belgian Pie reported dumping in the mountains. EPA investigates and says they can’t do anything because they don’t know who did this.
BP opens a bag and finds it stuffed with old phone, gas, electricty payments with the person’s name and address and phone number.
EPA shrugged it off.
This is a prime example of the lack of “will”,to find the perpetrators. EPA seems to think it will all go away naturally. This should be a jailable offence,which means more risk for the culprits.Is Taiwan so far behind evidentially ,it can not follow the Red road back to the Factory.? Factory should be closed immediately.It won’t be… 
and that is sad.
Yes. When I used to complain (repeatedly) about my neighbors burning the EPA said they literally had to catch someone lighting the fire. Just having a fire on your lot was not enough.
I suspect the laws were written this way deliberately.
The EPA head requested that it SHOULD NOT have the power to block development projects in Taiwan as there was so much controversy about it’s decisions. Bizarre stuff indeed. They are an embattled agency in the current administration.
aecen.org/stories/taiwan-cab … t-projects
They don’t actually have that much power in a lot of instances. For instance in the recent case of an illegal extension to a hotel in Kending, they wanted the hotel to seize operations and to cut services to the hotel, but it is the county government that needs to serve the fine and cut the services.
etaiwannews.com/etn/news_con … id=2212667
So nothing had happened to date, don’t know if anything has changed since. Guess who the Pingdong county government is in pocket to.
Taiwan and Taiwanese, wake up.
This makes me feel sick. I got into the textile industry because images like this make me want to cry and it’s all I can do to try and fix it.
I remember going to China in 2009 and being in my ancestral villages, there was this pond that my grandmother used to swim in as a young girl and in all the photos it’s beautiful and charming. But when I went back in 09 it was tinted blue from the indigo dye run off from the denim manufacturing industry, it’s heart breaking.
I agree with your sentiment headhoncho that Taiwan needs to wake up. This is not on. And for people to think they can just get away with it…not okay.
[quote=“Staceycolleena”]…I remember going to China in 2009 and being in my ancestral villages, there was this pond that my grandmother used to swim in as a young girl and in all the photos it’s beautiful and charming. But when I went back in 09 it was tinted blue from the indigo dye run off from the denim manufacturing industry, it’s heart breaking.
[/quote]
That is heartbreaking.
And people, even here, think I am the crazy one for not insta-purchasing shit on a whim, and actually look around for things made in countries that at least pretend to give a shit.
People should really start posting this stuff all over facebook and youtube, the source of most Taiwanese education, and make the country ashamed internationally. Short of that, we will most likely be enjoying bright red rivers for many years to come.
I wonder if people notice the increased pollution over the last half of the century and also notice how many cancer clinics and massive hospital wards are being created for cancer.
Taiwan is so bad sometimes i seriously consider leaving this country and pulling out all my time/investments/assets all because i honestly think I am going to die much earlier due to how fucking dirty this place is. Love Taiwan, but there is no denying how fucking stupid people here are with this stuff and how little anyone really cares. Poor children from here. will be raised clueless and not even realize how much pollution they are bathing in. So far about 6 people, in the entire i i have lived here, have actually named pollution as the reason tap water here is shit, everyone else didnt get it.
Lastly, cause this shit actually infuriated me and i probably sound like a dick, this time is in an industrial park. This country is known for manufacture. That is Taiwan more or less, making shit. So why in the hell have these parks not been fitted to deal with industrial waste? Seriously. And this is TAIPEI for fuck sakes. If there is ONE place in Taiwan that has hope for inspections and government doing there job, its there. This stuff happens on varying scales daily everywhere in Taiwan unfortunately. lets not get into other stuff like what happens to our toilet water (ditch) and what happens to our garbage (air)
Thanks for posting this though, this exact situation has literally made my convincing my wife how to build the house in a clean more environmentally sound manner so much easier.
Yes! My workmates think I’m a fashion snob because I won’t buy any clothes from the night markets or big chain stores, they’re like, it doesn’t have to be good quality Stacey because it’s cheap and you can buy another one…to which I reply, it doesn’t matter how much you pay for a pair of shoes, the environmental impact of one pair is more or less the same. And one Taiwanese guy I met was like, your dress is organic cotton? What a hipster…
Can’t people understand that mass-consumption kills (see: Bangladesh factory collapse). I best stop before I get too fired up. :fume: :fume: :fume:
It’s depressing.
It’s 2013…the clean up of this place has taken far too long.
Well, as long as people keep the KMT in power progress will be glacial. All the cities in Taiwan got a kickstart under DPP mayors. Taipei was a pigsty before CSB.
During Chen’s presidency the EPA did a nationwide survey of rice fields and closed down thousands of hectares. Leaded gas was banned, air quality improved dramatically, national parks and forest reserves were strengthened. If they had controlled the legislative we would now have a proper land use bill. They fought for years only to have the KMT legislative constantly refuse to hear it.
Taiwan is at least 10 years behind where it should be on environmental protection (according to IMF studies that link GDP with the environment) and that has everything to do with who has been running this place since 1949.
As much as i like to bug my wife about Mr. Chen, he did do a lot of good for this rock. Just not for free 
As opposed to the entire KMT taking public properties turning it into trillion NT worth of party properties, and now refuse to return them to the public, but instead cheap selling them piece by piece to land developers[1][2], then taking bribes in contracting[3]. To cover it all up, president Ma appointed Control Yuan minister was caught destroying control yuan documented evidence on KMT’s illegal transactions of these properties[4]?
On the other hand, KMT prosecution coerced people into collaboration and make up false incriminating statements to put Chen Sui-Bian away[5]. Yeah, CSB is the worse… if black is white.
I’m anti KMT as much as the next, but my family here is all hard core green, which makes it easy to pick on the jail bird and get them all riled up. Its not every topic you can get an entire family just as agitated as each other at the same time.
If this spill happened under Chen’s watch, there might have been a chance of action. But this one, even under the public eye, i guarantee will just be a slap on the wrist. Public shaming will likely be the worst of it.
I am curious though, how many proper waste disposal units/setups do people really think are installed and USED in factories here? a lot of pollution goes to the ditch. When it comes to polluting, Taiwan is like a lump of coal spray painted gold.
not directly related but was looking up fish breeding today and found this article:
Exposure of Taiwan residents to polychlorinated biphenyl congeners from farmed, ocean-caught, and imported fish.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14594364
[quote]Abstract
This study is to assess PCB levels in five frequently consumed fish species in Taiwan, tilapia, milkfish, white pomfret, hairtail, and cod. Seventeen congeners were measured in fillet samples purchased from major markets in northern, central, and southern Taiwan. All 136 samples had traces of PCBs. The median concentrations were 0.18, 0.46, 0.62, 0.69, and 7.34 ng/g wet wt and 1.01, 0.28, 1.14, 5.06, and 19.3 pg-WHO-TEQ/g lipid in tilapia, milkfish, white pomfret, hairtail, and cod samples, respectively. Cod (the imported fish) had the highest wet weight PCB concentrations. The fish caught off-shore (white pomfret and hairtail) had higher levels than the farmed fish (tilapia and milkfish). The congener profiles varied among species. PCB 105/153 and 126 accounted for more than 28% and 53% of the 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin equivalents (WHO-TEQs) in hairtail and cod, respectively; while PCB 156 was the major TEQ contributor in the other species. The estimated median PCB intake of the general public from consumption of the five species ranged from 0.000023 to 0.048 pg-WHO-TEQ/kg/day. It was also found that samples farmed or caught along the southern coast had higher PCB levels than those from other parts of Taiwan, indicating possible elevated PCB contamination around that area.[/quote]
I was listening to a radio station where they have a series of researchers discussing ocean biology. One researcher talked about an interesting phenomenon around coastal Taoyuan. Every year, there would be a month where green algae and oyster seedlings return to the coast, turning everything green and full of life, a bit like the North-Eastern coast of Taiwan. But after that month everything returned to a white blight of death.
Then he realized those month is always when the Lunar New Year takes place. During the new years, factory stops running, and therefore stops piping pollution into the coastline. The sea quickly carries life to the shore and without the pollution they flourish like how life does naturally in Taiwan. But once the new year is over, untreated waste again flows into the ocean, killing everything along Taiyuan’s coast.
I assume that’s pretty much how it is around Taiwan.
not only pumping pollution out, but using it to farm.
not scientific but found it mildly amusing that vancouver aquariums’ article on tilapia mentions in 2 paragraphs Taiwan’s shitty practices with aquaculture.
oceanwise.ca/seafood/tilapia/tilapia-2
as an aside, many waste products are actually quite valuable once they research and find other uses. with Taiwans landscape/climate it has so much potential, its unreal.
I am always torn betwixt two issues here.
One, is that I feel the Stupidity of needless Polluting like this,deserves action.
Secondly, I am a guest in this Country and feel that the Taiwanese People should be fixing this.Herein lies the problem.Most people will do nothing because they don’t want trouble. Maybe one day…seems so futile. Just saying.