If one has to rely on inadequate laws and companies' own self-discipline, problems are bound to occur. For instance, in the FPG mercury waste affair, the contractor, unable to find an appropriate product category in the tariff schedule, declared the waste as "cement cake." ROC customs failed to prevent the waste being exported, with tragic results. A cloak of legality
Furthermore, the Basel Convention includes no penalty clauses. "In its current form it is toothless," says Hsing Haojan. Hence the convention secretariat is now drafting a section on insurance and indemnity. "Future cases like the FPG incident will not only affect industrialists. Governments too will have to take official responsibility, and this will directly impact countries' reputations and economies," Hsing says.
To avoid Taiwan being drawn into international disputes, and to do our duty as a member of the international community, ROC law urgently needs to be amended to keep up with the advance of international environmental protection measures. The number of facilities within Taiwan for the treatment and disposal of hazardous waste also needs to be increased as quickly as possible.
In fact, because there is nowhere else for hazardous waste to go, under current regulations waste which has been solidified or stabilized, and which passes leaching tests to ensure that there is no danger of toxins escaping, can be buried in segregated areas of city and county sanitary landfills. Environmental engineer Harrison Ku of CTC says that under current conditions this represents a reasonable compromise between cost and safety.
Nonetheless, there are not enough landfill sites in Taiwan where hazardous waste can be buried separately from other waste. According to figures published by the EPA last year, throughout Taiwan there are 139 illegal toxic waste dumps, but only six legal privately owned sanitary landfills.
To make matters worse, in the aftermath of the FPG mercury waste incident deficient management at the few legal sites was also exposed.
Yuntai Waste Disposal Company, which was contracted to dispose of FPG's mercury waste, used its legal status as a cover for illegal practices, fly-tipping the waste at many locations. When this was revealed in the wake of the Cambodian incident, Yuntai's waste disposal license was suspended, reducing Taiwan's six legal waste disposal companies with their own landfill sites by one.
In mid-March, Kaohsiung County chief executive Yu Cheng-hsien arrived in person at the landfill operated by the disposal company Sungsheng with a large retinue of personnel from the county Bureau of Environmental Protection, to carry out a surprise inspection. Sungsheng general manager Li Shih-fang complained bitterly to Yu that cutthroat competition between waste disposal firms and rampant fly-tipping have cut so deeply into legal operators' profit margins that they cannot cover their operating costs.
One environmental engineer says that when negotiating contracts, some unscrupulous operators openly quote two different prices-one for legal disposal and the other for illegal disposal. Meanwhile operators themselves say that customers may haggle down the price for disposing of a ton of waste from NT$9,000 to NT$3,000. Under such circumstances, it is not hard to imagine the quality of disposal which results.
After chemical solvents and heavy metals are separated from effluent by flocculation and settling, the resulting sludge still has to be solidified for final disposal by burial.