Three days of uncollected garbage lined the roads in Pingtung; trash was piled high on the streets and alleys of Chiayi; Yangmei Township in Taoyuan County went for over a month without collection, resulting in an avenue of garbage that stretched for more than 100 meters. Garbage, garbage, garbage everywhere. Has Formosa the beautiful isle turned into an island of refuse?

There's nothing new about Taiwan's garbage battles. Conflicts about trash are routine on the island. Recently, however, it's been all-out war. The actions of newly elected Taoyuan County Executive Annette Lu have created great controversy inside the county and, when combined with people's emotional reactions to garbage, have caused outsiders to sit up and take notice.

Without urgent steps taken to build new incinerators and to open landfill sites, the county has for several years been paying private firms to ship its garbage out of the county. Because each ton of garbage costs NT$1200 to transport and process, firms often secretly dump where they shouldn't. Requiring no capital, the industry has been a magnet for organized crime, and attempts to resolve Taoyuan County's garbage problems by building incinerators or sanitary landfills have met setbacks. As a result, from Ilan to Hsinchu, from Taichung to Yunlin, you can find traces of Taoyuan garbage: receipts from Taoyuan gas stations and addresses of Taoyuan clinics and restaurants on drug prescription bags and take-out lunch boxes. Such irrefutable evidence has left Taoyuan squirming in the spotlight.

With localities all over the province barely able to cope with their own garbage, Taoyuan County has been attacked time and time again for exporting its trash. Finally, the Environmental Protection Administration stopped issuing licenses to 18 firms unqualified to transport garbage last August. Since Taoyuan County was unable to handle its garbage by itself, garbage started to pile up. And in such cities as Chungli and Yangmei the streets became lined with mounds of the stuff.

To fulfill an election promise to eliminate garbage from Taoyuan's cities, County Executive Annette Lu has, first of all, applied to the EPA to build two inter-area incinerators which would be operational in four years. Secondly, she has asked 13 cities, townships and rural townships to build small-scale sanitary landfills, and permitted and aided towns in establishing small-scale incinerators and local dumps, which can serve as stop-gap measures before the main incinerators are built. The Taiwan Provincial Government has also promised to help Taoyuan County pay for four landfill sites used strictly for garbage.

Such steps will help in the future, but what could be done to relieve the garbage problem of today? On May 23, with EPA Director Tsai Hsun-hsiung as a witness, Annette Lu and Taipei Mayor Chen Shui-bian reached an agreement to transport Taoyuan's present garbage for disposal in Taipei. Yet there were various issues involved, including whether this arrangement would overburden Taipei's own waste management efforts. One after another, city council members came out against the deal, and eventually it fell through.

Finally, with the help of the EPA, Tungluo Rural Township in Miaoli County agreed to handle Taoyuan's garbage, accepting garbage that was then piled up in Taoyuan, with Taoyuan footing the bill. Although many locals protested, the garbage trucks rolled into Tungluo one after another.

When Taoyuan's garbage problems became a focus of media reports, Lu found herself criticized by more than just Taoyuan County legislators. She was also attacked by politicians from outside the county who covet her post, including three Taipei City Council members: Chu Mei-feng from the New Party and Chin Hui-chu and Chu Feng-chih from the KMT. Lu, however, who was elected only a few months ago, pointed out that the Taoyuan garbage problem has existed for a long time. New Party and KMT attempts to lay all the blame at her feet just showed how politicized the problem had become, she argued. In any case, during the mayoral and county executive elections to be held at the end of this year, the garbage question is certain to be a major issue again.

Politicizing the garbage problem isn't going to get rid of the piles of it on Taoyuan's streets. Legislator Li Ying-yuan suggests that laws requiring localities to build their own garbage disposal sites ought to be abandoned in favor of regulations requiring counties to meet their own garbage disposal needs. Currently 30-40 legislators have come out in favor of this proposal.

According to a table released by the EPA on June 3, among the 316 dumps established by towns on the island, 82 were full, and another 55 closed on June 1 after being deemed too close to rivers. With landfill sites closing one after another, it's easy to see that the garbage wars could spread to all of Taiwan.

To solve the problem of full dumps, Chen Yung-jen, director of the EPA's waste management office, says that the only course of action is to increase the number of dumps and to promote recycling. The EPA has asked localities to consider environmental and sanitation needs when doing city and regional planning and when rezoning agricultural land. Before the end of the year, five incinerators will be completed. It is estimated that by 2001, Taiwan will have 22 operational incinerators, which will collectively be able to handle 70 percent of the island's trash. These will greatly reduce garbage disposal pressures.

Charges for garbage collection are also being changed. Linked to water use, they were previously based on the base rate. Starting in July there is no longer a base rate for water use, and charges for both water and garbage collection will now be based entirely on the amount of water used. The EPA hopes that the new system will encourage people to conserve water. Yet domestic environmental groups suggest that charges for garbage collection should also be levied in proportion to the amount of garbage collected, and that only then will Taiwan be able to increase recycling and decrease the number of dumps. Beginning in July, the EPA will ask some local sanitation units to try charging for garbage collection based on amount. In this plan citizens will be required to use garbage bags provided by the EPA and will be charged per bag. The hope is that the experiment will serve as a model for other local governments to follow.

The garbage wars aren't just Taoyuan's problem. If government and people aren't able to learn their lesson by recycling and reducing their garbage, then more dumps and incinerators won't provide a long-term solution, and garbage wars will become a permanent feature of life in Taiwan.

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Sitting there through heat and rain, the long pile of garbage in Chungli gave off a terrible odor and leaked filthy water. Students who had to walk this street to go to school had no choice but to hold their noses. (photo by Tsai Ming-teh)