Seven years ago, the "We love Lukang, we don't love Dupont" action of the people of Lukang in Changhua unfurled the first flag of local environmental protection movements. They could chase away the stranger from afar; but faced with their "own flesh and blood" of local factories with whom they have personal relationships, the people of Lukang have been in no rush to oppose pollution of irrigation channels and farmland.

One town, 500 chairmen of the board: "My dad raised 11 kids. The fish that we ate we caught in this irrigation ditch; the rice paddies used the water from the ditch; the vegetable field took mud from the bottom of the ditch to serve as base. We all joked that we weren't raised by dad, we were raised by heaven," says Ko Mien--who lives by the irrigation system in Fuhsing Rural Township in Changhua and was once selected as one of the ten most outstanding rural homemakers--looking out her window down on the ditch and remembering. Though the angels may indeed be on the side of the innocent, perhaps heaven is not willing to protect those people, now knee-deep in cash, who made the economic miracle?

"Now if there's just a change of seasons, and the air pressure changes at the bottom of the river, the marsh gas from the bottom will surge up, and then catch fire," says Ho; it seems like she is describing two completely different ditches.

You can find out the reason for the "changes" in the river. Even as visitors wander in and out of Lukang's historical buildings looking for remnants of a flourishing cultural past, the villages are changing.

In the 1960s, when Taiwan industry began to struggle forward, the main area of development in central Taiwan was handicrafts. Taking advantage of its geographic position, Changhua accepted the related electroplating work that was needed, and satellite factories appeared one after the other. After these achieved some scale, orders from large home appliance or bathroom fixture companies, which needed electroplating work done, poured in from north, central and southern Taiwan; especially busy were towns like Shetou, Homei, Lukang, and Fuhsing, all in neighboring Taichung County. At its peak the number of electroplate factories in the area reached 1,000, second in number only to Taipei County.

People rushed bravely forward to develop related industries: bicycles, umbrellas, metals. I open a factory, then lease it to you; you give him a subsidiary ... Affiliated factories sprung up one after another, as Changhua fought to be the top producer of umbrella and bicycle frames in Taiwan.

"One small town could have five hundred chairmen of the board," says Changhua County Magistrate Chou Ching-yu. Changhua's industrial development was local, learn-by-doing, with an especially large proportion of non-monitored under ground operations.

According to statistics of the Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB) of Changhua County, Changhua has 15,000 factories, but only 20% do waste water treatment. Yet even these figures are from the 90s; Lin Ta-hsiung, an official at the Changhua Agricultural Land Water Conservancy Association, says that they began polluting in the 1960s.

More iron in their diets: What is the reaction of the Association and the farmers to improving water quality and soil pollution?

Ko Mien states: "Our rural township mayor says that his townspeople are all 'eating copper' and 'eating iron'." Most of the farmers know quite well why the water is so dirty and why there are problems with the crops they plant. But don't even mention that the source of pollution might be neighboring factories run by their fellow townsfolk; some pollute their own land with their own factories! One university student from a farm family notes that people who were able to open factories in the past were seen as relatively well-off and as knowing how to get things done, and didn't need to sweat and bake under a hot sun. "Open a factory!" Everyone was envious, put away their rain hats and went into the factory to make money faster.

Because of this, people say, "if the Environ mental Protection Administration wants to arrest violators, they could arrest every family." Ask them why they don't report the pollution to the EPA or the Water Conservancy Association: "Report?! That would offend somebody," says a farmer from Lukang.

If you ask farmers whose land has been found to have too much cadmium, "Who contaminated it?," they will answer "Who knows?" Bent-backed, rain-hat covered, sweating farmers are only worried that on their own land, "We can't plant! Should we just let the grass grow over it?"

I love Changhua, but do I have to love the illegal factories? When the agricultural authorities required that some land be declared as contaminated, farmers who consequently lost half of their farmland, with expressions that looked like they were ready to cry, moaned, "This time half." Yet an electroplating factory owner driving by in his truck little slowed down and, sticking his head out the window, laughed, "What's up? Another few hundred hectares poisoned?"

Lee Tung-liang, a Changhua County Councilor and a leader in the anti-Dupont environmental movement, says that if the water quality does not improve he is thinking about calling on the farmers to let all their land go to waste, and appeal to the county magistrate. "But, that would probably be very hard, and I'm afraid it wouldn't be easy to get a positive response from the farmers."

It's not that no one cares. After the Homei incident burst on the scene, many Lukang farmers thought to themselves: We're at the tail end of the rivers, and might be even more seriously off than those in Homei upriver. So they said, "We also want a chemical analysis to find out." But others felt it shouldn't be done, "otherwise people wouldn't eat our rice from Lukang." Chao Shui-po still went to the agriculture bureau, only to be told, "If you want an investigation, it'll cost you NT$800."

Some agricultural units are indeed worried that in order to get their land rezoned for building (so they can sell it at a high price) some farmers would deliberately pollute their land. But Chao Shui-po says angrily, "Who would want to see the land they've worked for a lifetime poisoned? Some people say we want to rezone. But that's the only thing that farmers can do, otherwise what do you want us to do? If you can't rely on that land to make a living, then give it up--you can't just let it turn into wilderness for eternity."

Environmental protection as the villain: Farmland can't be polluted this way indefinitely. Is there really nothing that can be done about the electroplating industry?

"It's not that there's no recourse, it's just that implementation is very difficult," says Chen Cheng- kuang, a technician at the Changhua EPB. If you want to force the offending factories to close by cutting off their electricity and water, that's easy in theory. "Our section chief often raises his head to call out, 'Charge!' but the woman factory boss stands in front of the car and dares us to run her over. You cut off their electricity or water, and they go out and buy a generator and a water pump. He's got an underground factory, how can you tell him he must do pollution prevention? And if he actually does it, a one in ten thousand chance, what if the construction bureau tells him he has to close up shop? Only a small minority don't want to play hide and seek with you. The EPA has even gone to Changhua to hold seminars to teach operators the concept of environmental protection, offering sticks and carrots; but this touches only 30% or 40% of the electroplating factories."

There are more than 10,000 illegal factories; the EPA has only been established for three years. Every day inspectors run themselves lame, spreading out like a bomb blast. But they haven't gotten to more than 3,000 factories, each inspected once, and who knows what year the next inspection will be? "If you want environmental officials to get every violator before you can do pollution prevention, then the environmental authorities just can't get it done," says Huang Sheng-fa, director of the Changhua EPB. What's more, if you go to catch violators, you're liable to be reminded, "Don't forget, they contribute to national economic development, too." The operators themselves feel that it's unfair to cut off their water and electricity: "We did this in my grandfather's time; you could dump out the water before, and now you can't. Our orders are all being taken by the mainland." In fact, today he can't compete with the mainland even if he does environmental protection work, but "the EPB always ends up being the villain in the piece," says You Shou-tsung of the EPB with a sigh.

Small factories, big polluters: Also, the central government often doubts the local inspectors, thinking they might be in cahoots with the factory owners, and that that's the reason local environmental work is not being done well. Having "made their careers" in the same place, they perhaps can't be "too heavy-handed" when acting. "But this attitude is a blow to local inspectors."

Faced with the weak condition of small factories, the localities can't, like the EPA, hit out at the large industrial polluters, gaining fame and reputations. The Industrial Development Bureau and the EPA want to use punitive taxes or land confiscation to renovate the industrial structure, but these "tools" are of no use when it's cat and mouse with mobile and sneaky little factories. Just as some motorcycles create as much pollution as cars, the pollution from many small factories is right up there with large enterprises.

In order to deal with the spreading fear in Changhua that no one dares to eat rice or to buy local vegetables, magistrate Chou says, "the only thing to do is to map out an alternative road of survival for the factory operators."

To lower the costs of environmental protection for factories, and to consolidate control, the county government plans to establish a special electro plating factory area in the Changpin Industrial Park, on which work is already underway, to rent out to operators. "If the county citizens make money, then the county government makes money, so I've nothing to cry about. But you can't make 'dirty' money." Chou urges the electroplaters to move to the industrial park: "Development is important, but there's no substitute for life."

Don't make dirty money! But today, the attitude of many factories is "telling us to move is like telling us to close." In fact, in the past few years, the shortage of labor and other problems has already brought the number of electroplating factories down steadily. "Waste water from electroplating operations is more complex than most other waste water. If you really want to do pollution prevention, it won't be just NT$300-400,000, but will be over ten million," says one Lukang factory owner in the business for more than 15 years. If they had set up a specialized area in the past, he would have willingly gone, but it's too late now. He already plans to go to Pudong near Shanghai to set up a large electroplating factory. "We'll do pollution prevention work in Shanghai," he says. When the factories go, they will leave behind dirty water and contaminated earth--especially soil pollution. "You could say that the damage has been done," says one worker in agriculture. So even if the electroplating factories really do all leave, will this solve the problem?

Changhua might end up with both agricultural and industrial failure.

[Picture Caption]

"All eleven kids in our family were raised with that irrigation ditch,"says Ko Mien, looking at the ditch off in the distance and sighing thatthe water quality today is a far cry from yesteryear.

Changhua folks drinking water from Puli? Changhua is the county whose land has been most severely tainted, and the more prudent types insist that even their water comes from a different locale.

Farm and industry have each other as neighbors--and you can imagine the result.

Changhua struggled to become the number one producer of umbrella frames, but the land has paid the price. (photo by Huang Li-li)

Changhua folks drinking water from Puli? Changhua is the county whose land has been most severely tainted, and the more prudent types insist that even their water comes from a different locale.

Farm and industry have each other as neighbors--and you can imagine the result.

Changhua struggled to become the number one producer of umbrella frames, but the land has paid the price. （photo by Huang Li-li）