201027MinisterShen-PartenrshipProgram
Remarks by Taiwan EPA Minister Stephen Shu-Hung Shen at the 10th Anniversary of the Soil and Groundwater Remediation Act
2010/10/27atGISNTUConvention Center, Taipei, Taiwan, As Prepared
Good morning ladies and gentlemen.There is a Chinese proverb that says, “It is such a pleasure to have friends coming from afar.” As the Minister of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Administration, I would like to welcome all of you, who have come from 13 countries, to join in celebrating our 10th anniversary of the promulgation of the Soil and Groundwater Remediation Act.
To our foreign friends, I sincerely hope you have had a wonderful time and a chance to experience Taiwanese hospitality in the last few days.
Our government has recognized the problem of soil pollution since it discovered cadmium- contaminated rice in 1983. Since then, more and more soil and groundwater contaminated sites have been found. As a result, the Taiwan EPA started to draft its own regulations to manage soil and groundwater pollution in 1991. After nine years of efforts, the Soil and Groundwater Remediation Act was promulgated on February 2, 2000. And on February 3 this year, our legislature passed a major amendment of this act and added sediments as the additional environmental medium to be protected.
The passage of the act allows us not only to establish regulations to protect our soil and groundwater but also collect fees from the importers and manufacturers of the announced substances to establish the Soil and Groundwater Remediation Fund for conducting investigation and remediation work. In recent years, we have collected about 650 million NT dollars for the fund.
During the past decade, we have investigated about 1,000 hectors of farmland, 1,800 active gas stations, 170 large tank farms, 2,000 closed factories, 40 illegal dumping sites, and 10 active factories using chlorinated solvents.
Although we have ordered the polluters to cleanup the land they polluted, many sites still have not completed remediation yet due to the limitation of technology and budget.
The soil and groundwater quality information collected during the investigations stored in a GIS database. And we are planning to produce a risk map which will be generated by using the information in the database. This information will show a property’s human health risk level calculated with the soil and groundwater quality information collected in and around the property.
Ten years ago, there were only a few sites under remediation and very little information about the cleanup efforts. At that time, the most common way to cleanup pollutants was excavation and then burying in a landfill or immobilization with cement.
Now better technologies such as heating polluted soil to vaporize and then capture pollutants, introducing microorganisms to digest pollutants, or sweeping pollutants out of the ground by introducing air flow are often adopted in Taiwan. Experienced professionals are therefore in great demand.
Since the promulgation of the Soil and Groundwater Remediation Act in 2000, several other changes have also occurred in the last decade.
First, the industry has learned that it has to pay the high price to cleanup the land they polluted if the Taiwan EPA discovers the contamination and orders them to complete the remediation within a certain period of time.
Second, many universities are offering soil and groundwater study programs for Master’s or Ph.D. degrees. And many universities have established research centers for developing innovative remediation technologies.
Third, new investigation tools have been utilized in labs and fields. We used to use cable tool to install groundwater monitoring wells. Now we use direct push or air hammer to install groundwater monitoring wells everywhere. Moreover, in order to improve cost and time effectiveness of investigation, now we use MIP (membrane interface probe) to detect volatile contaminants, XRF (x-ray fluorescence) to detect heavy metals, and field test kits to detect TPHs (total petroleum hydrocarbons) and explosive pollutants. Then according to the screening results, we only take the suspected portion of soil and groundwater samples for further confirmation to be conducted in labs.
Although we have achieved many milestones in the last ten years, we will not stop here and will keep making progresses.
The goals of our future work are to revitalize the usage of the contaminated land with green remediation strategies, protect our land by rigorously carrying out the regulations, provide training courses of advance technologies for our professionals, and share our experiences with other countries in our region.
Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to the USEPA and AIT (American Institute in Taiwan). In the past years, you have continuously supported us every step of the way to share your knowledge and experiences in regulations, technologies and management strategies.
Especially, you have shared your experiences through our annual training workshop on site remediation. We certainly have learned a great deal of helpful lessons from your experts.
I look forward to continuously working together with our American friends to build a better and cleaner world through our new Partnership program under the bilateral cooperation framework between Taiwan EPA and the USEPA. Rapid globalization has interwoven domestic and international environmental challenges which can no longer be contained or resolved locally or domestically. As environment workers, we should strive to better protect air, water and earth, so that our children and children’s children will have a clean, healthy environment to live in. Since March last year, we have been discussing the possibilities of working together and forming partnership with Asia Pacific regional countries through the 17-year-old Taiwan EPA and US EPA bilateral cooperation framework. My administration has considered what will benefit us and what will benefit the US as well as our neighboring countries if we work together. Now I would like to take this opportunity to share you my Administration’s international partnership priorities as follows:
(1).Site Remediation
(2).CleanerPort Air Quality Partnership
(3).GHGs Emission Reduction and Carbon Trade
(4).Environmental Law Enforcement and Compliance- Inspection, Indemnity and Incentives
(5).Environmental Monitoring and Information Exchange
(6).Mercury Monitoring and Inventory
(7).Low Carbon Society
(8).E-waste Management and Recycling
These are topics we have learned from or will work together with the US EPA. Cross these priorities, human health protection especially children health protection, natural resource conservation, environmental justice will be the core values. Innovation, legal institution and enforcement, science and technology will be the principle. And training modules, best governance practice showcases, co-monitoring of transboundary pollutants, virtual centers of environmental information, issue-specific technical assistance, emergency response consultant & communication channel and working groups will be organized to involve regional stakeholders’ participation. This Thursday and Friday, the Workshop on Bioremediation will be the first activity under the Taiwan EPA and the US EPA partnership program. A wide variety of partnership activities will be developed and conducted in the following years. I call for your active participation in this partnership program and all the relevant activities to help each other effectively and efficiently protecting our common environment while facing each owns specific environmental challenge..
Lastly, I would like to thank all the attendees both foreign and local, for being here today. I hope you’ll enjoy the rest of your stay in Taipei. Thank you.
20101112EPAT-PartenrshipProgramFactSheet