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The problem of Industrial Pollution in Taiwan

     The fact was that the Department of Health had started to draw up an effluent standard since September 1984. Experts from some 27 organizations were invited to participate in the work of drawing up the standard and after several dozen meetings, they completed a draft by the end of 1986. Since Wei-chuan Food Processing Company put forward a different opinion concerning the degree of transparency, the draft was returned to the group for further study. In a meeting on February 7, 1987, the group decided not to change most of the standards except for adopting a stricter standard of mercury bearing. Finally, the Effluent Standard was approved by the Executive Yuan on April 11 and issued by the Department of Health on May 5, 1987. (Chung-kuo shih-pao, 1987/02/08/3; EPA. 1994: 65

     Behind all these events was the fact that the situation of Taiwan's water pollution was already quite serious in the 1980s. The EPB drew up a plan to implement water pollution prevention and control in April 1986. This plan revealed that 7 of the 151 rivers in Taiwan were seriously polluted and altogether 23 percent of the rivers had been polluted to different degrees. Moreover, organic substances had polluted 88 irrigation channels and most reservoirs had become eutrophicated. (Lien-ho-pao, 1986/04/30/2) Another report in 1988 said that the water quality of 34 percent of the wells inspected by the health authority were found to be substandard and this indicated that underground water was also seriously polluted. (Taiwan jih-pao, 1988/10/22/3)

     Along at the same time, the situation of water pollution deteriorated. Table 1 shows the statistics provided by the EPA. Taking all three levels together, in the case of 21 major rivers, the polluted length increased from 26 percent in 1983 to 39 percent in 1996; in the case of 29 minor rivers, from 31 percent in 1987 to 34 percent in 1996. It is especially notable that the percentage of heavy pollution among the major rivers increased from around 5 percent to 16 percent and among the minor rivers from 5 percent to 11 percent. The situation seems to improve a little bit in 1997 and 1998.

As for the situation of 16 reservoirs in Taiwan, the phenomenon of eutrophication was quite common. The EPA statistics show that the 12 reservoirs had a Carlson TSI of more than 50 in 1993-1994; the number reduced to 4 in 1995 and to 5 in 1996. If looking at a Carlson Tsi between 40 and 50, then only Sun-Moon Lake was below this level. The Fei-ts'ui Reservoir which supplies water for the Taipei area usually had Carlson TSI around 40 while the Ch'eng-ch'ing Lake which provides water for the Kaohsiung area had a Carlson TSI around 80 in 1996. (EPA, 1997: 122-123)

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