In short, it is necessary to have mutual interactions between the agricultural and environmental administrative authorities to work together to deal with the problem of animal wastewater.

2.2 Industrial wastewater

     In 1974-1976 the Council of Water Resource Unification under the Ministry of Economic Affairs initiated a project to improve water pollution in the Taipei area, taking the Hsintien ch'i river source as a focal point. In 1977 another project of the Chilung ho river control area was initiated. According to the report of the year 1977, the treatment of industrial wastewater within the control areas of these two rivers had improved, but the progress was rather slow. Because many small and medium factories and mines could not afford to invest in setting up wastewater treatment equipment, it was suggested that the government should provide long-term low interest rate loans for these factories and mines to do improvements.

     Before the EPA issued the Effluent Standard in 1987, the Taiwan Provincial Environmental Protection Bureau had tried to control industrial liquid waste by classifying factories into three categories. In 1985-1986, altogether 5,309 factories were taken into inspection; of which 924 belonged to the first and second categories and were the focal points of inspection. The result showed that fines were imposed to 1,432 of the 4,974 inspection times with the total amount reaching NT$58,587,000. (TPEPB, 1986: 63) Moreover, booklets and short films were issued to advocate water pollution control and study groups were conducted for the factory owners. (TPEPB, 1986: 66-67) These efforts seemed to be not expeditiously enough to prevent the disasters from happening to aquatic products in early 1986.

     This disaster called forth more concerns for the problem cause by industrial wastewater. In addition to the special group set up by the Taiwan Provincial Government and the measures adopted by the Department of Health as mentioned earlier, the Executive Yuan passed a "Short-term Improvement Measure for the Prevention and Control of Water Pollution in Taiwan Area" on June 18, 1986. This measure adopted the principle that the polluter pays and criminal law was applied to penalize factories that refused to improve. Some measures were also taken to deal with the rivers and aquatic areas along the southwestern coast. (Taiwan jih-pao, 1986/06/19/2) Moreover, in September, public enterprises were required to thoroughly improve their water prevention and control system in order to set up a model for private enterprises. (Chung-yang jih-pao, 1986/09/02/3)