A million tonnes of furnace slag pollute farmland in Qishan, unresolved after six years as wastewater overflow severely damages the environment

Six years on, the controversy over "furnace slag buried in farmland" in Dalin Village, Qishan District, Kaohsiung City remains unresolved! Since 2014, every summer, whenever there is prolonged rain or a sudden downpour, the soil in the furnace slag backfill area becomes oversaturated with water, and milky-yellow wastewater overflows onto the neighboring farmland.

In August of this year (2019), the wastewater appeared again, overflowing into the surrounding banana, papaya and coconut plantations. In early September, the wastewater receded, leaving a thick layer of sediment in the fields and irrigation ditches, to the deep distress of the farmers. The biggest victim is 76-year-old veteran farmer Lin Zheng-nan, who poured out his grievances to reporters: "The year before last, when the verdict came down, the High Administrative Court said those things buried in the soil were waste and ordered the city government to require the operators to remove it in accordance with the law, but even now, the operators are still building walls and patching walls, clearly intent on dragging it out forever!"

From abandoned plantation to grand canyon, and finally a furnace slag burial site

The "Xiao Gong Sheng Jun" temple in Dalin Village, Qishan, Kaohsiung, is just a small shrine at a three-way intersection, but because it is said to have suppressed a local plague seventy years ago, the two nearby villages both look to it as their center of faith.

Seventy-five meters northeast of the Sheng Jun Temple lies a 7-hectare plot of farmland where sand and gravel were illegally mined in 1996, leaving a pit with a total area of about 5.2 hectares and a depth of more than 20 meters. Pits like this that fill with water to form ponds are common on remote farmland in the Gaoping area and were long jokingly called the "grand canyon" by locals, and the deep pit in Dalin Village later became an important water source for residents to fish in and farmers to irrigate with.

In May 2013, just as the rice ears across southern Taiwan were turning golden, residents noticed large trucks, one after another, working around the clock in shifts to dump unidentified fill material into the deep pit. Zheng Miao-zhen, chairwoman of the Dalin Village Anti-Waste Furnace Slag Self-Rescue Association, said that between May 2013 and June 2014, the landowner Huang Yin-ling, who is also the head of Jianfa Construction, and Dai Wen-qing, head of Wanda Material Technology, backfilled these deep pits with 1 million tonnes of furnace slag purchased from Zhonglian Resource, generated during the steelmaking process at China Steel Corporation.

Abandoned by agriculture and animal husbandry, a sorrowful fate; the Dalin countryside is not peaceful

In fact, as early as 1999, the Kaohsiung City Government had already approved China Steel's residual steelmaking furnace slag to be registered as a "product" in its factory registration certificate, so when the Kaohsiung City Environmental Protection Bureau received reports from the public in 2013, it could not handle the furnace slag buried in Dalin farmland under the "Waste Disposal Act." At the time, the Kaohsiung City Government searched through every statute, and in the end the Land Administration Bureau fined the operators NT$60,000 under the "Regional Plan Act."

But a mere NT$60,000 could not stop the furnace slag from advancing onto the farmland, and after 1 year and 1 month of dumping, the original deep pit was filled level.

Looking back at the earlier life of this furnace slag backfill farmland, it began as rice paddies, banana plantations and pig farms. Later, after the decline of agriculture in the 1970s and the government's policy in the 1990s to move livestock away from the Gaoping River area, it finally became an illegal sand and gravel pit and a burial site for the steel industry. From then on, Dalin Village became the most turbulent rural village in Qishan.

China Steel subsidiary: furnace slag can pave roads and build houses

Zhonglian Resource is a subsidiary of the China Steel Group. Initially it was responsible for innovative and value-added uses of furnace slag, a byproduct of China Steel's manufacturing process, and later expanded its operations to resource regeneration and pollution remediation, such as processing and trading furnace slag powder, cleaning up waste-contaminated sites, and remediating soil and groundwater pollution. This is why China Steel's furnace slag was sold through Zhonglian Resource to Jianfa Construction and Wanda Material for disposal.

Xu Deng-ke, director of the technical office at Zhonglian Resource, explained that furnace slag, called "furnace stone" in the industry, is a byproduct of China Steel's integrated steelmaking process, and as long as it undergoes stabilization treatment, it can generally be used in roads, artificial fish reefs and breakwater blocks. "For example, a 1.7-kilometer stretch of dense-graded asphalt concrete was laid on Nanxing Road in Kaohsiung City, and because furnace slag was added, it is especially strong and durable, and it even won recognition with the 16th Public Construction Golden Quality Award."

In addition, Xu Deng-ke further explained: "We have also successfully developed permeable asphalt, and sections of National Highway No. 6 and National Highway No. 1 have already been paved with it, which can prevent water accumulation when it rains and reduce the water spray caused by high-speed driving."

The Control Yuan corrects the Kaohsiung City Government: furnace slag must not be backfilled into farmland

But the meaning and value of furnace slag as a product did nothing to ease residents' concerns. In May 2014, a group from the Dalin Village Anti-Waste Furnace Slag Self-Rescue Association, the Zunhuai Culture and Education Foundation and the Tainan Community University Environmental Action Group went to the Control Yuan to petition. In February of the following year, the Control Yuan issued a correction against the Kaohsiung City Government: "The Kaohsiung City Government knew full well that agricultural land may not, under the law, be backfilled with converter furnace slag and other steelmaking furnace slag... yet allowed the backfill area to keep expanding to 5.2 hectares, with a quantity exceeding 990,000 metric tonnes (about 25,950 truckloads), seriously damaging government credibility; there is indeed a dereliction of duty, and a correction is therefore proposed in accordance with the law."

However, a correction is just a correction, and the controversy still cannot be resolved. The key is that the Kaohsiung City Government, China Steel, Zhonglian Resource and the operators all agree that furnace slag is a "product," and Zhonglian Resource even states on its website that furnace slag is "geotechnical engineering" for backfilling illegal sand and gravel pits, and that "after the backfill area was covered with soil, the vegetation flourished and it is lush and green; the area planted with cosmos is in full bloom, the wild bananas hang heavy with fruit, and the land has regained its vitality."

Kaohsiung High Administrative Court: furnace slag is waste and must be removed

Huang Huan-zhang, convener of the Tainan Community University Environmental Action Group, responded: "We know that backfilling farmland means backfilling clean soil. Is furnace slag soil? Furnace slag is not soil; furnace slag is waste. Just like a refrigerator kept at home is an asset, a product, but when a refrigerator is dumped on farmland, it is waste." The self-rescue association and residents also agreed that since it is buried in farmland, it is "waste" and cannot be regarded as a "product," and they finally decided to take the case to court.

On May 31, 2017, the Kaohsiung High Administrative Court issued a ruling recognizing furnace slag as "waste." Qiu Zheng-qiang, then chief judge of the Kaohsiung High Administrative Court, even specially answered the media publicly: "In this case, furnace slag is to be defined as 'waste,' and since it is waste, the Waste Disposal Act applies. In other words, the competent authority has the obligation to order the responsible persons to remove it."

The ruling is useless? A million tonnes of furnace slag still occupy the farmland to this day

On the eighth day after the Kaohsiung High Administrative Court issued its ruling, the Kaohsiung City Environmental Protection Bureau swiftly "issued a letter ordering Huang Yin-ling, Dai Wen-qing, Jianfa Company, Wanda Company and Zhonglian Resource Company to clean up within a deadline and to submit a cleanup plan within a deadline." However, the operators refused to accept this and filed an administrative appeal, and two years later, the furnace slag still occupies the farmland.

Acting Director-General Wu Jia-an stated: "In accordance with the relevant provisions of the Waste Disposal Act, we require the operator surnamed Huang, the operator surnamed Dai and the related companies to complete the cleanup within one year and six months,