Xuejia rice paddy buried with waste furnace slag case: landowners knew and claimed it was legal; agricultural authorities investigate and seal up the rice
Yesterday it was reported that a rice paddy in Xuejia, Tainan had been used by "Ming Xiang Xin Environmental Protection Company" to bury discarded furnace slag. Today the Agriculture and Food Agency, the joint inspection team of the Tainan City Government, the Chiayi County Investigation Station and prosecutorial investigation units continued to trace the flow of the rice, and found that 40,050 jin of rice was stored at the Sanhefeng drying plant in Chiayi County. Fortunately it had not yet reached the market, and it has now all been sealed and stored.
The landowner was fully aware of the whole course of this incident. Because the Ministry of Economic Affairs stipulates that waste furnace slag may be reused, it was only in 2011 that it announced that reused products belonging to base course or subbase-grade aggregate for paving works must not be used on agricultural land or cultivated land. Therefore, when the landowner faced inspection, he claimed that the waste furnace slag had been filled in before 20112 m of soil on top of the furnace slag
If the water quality, soil quality and rice tested by government agencies also all pass, then in the end there will be no law under which this incident can be punished.
21 tonnes of rice sealed in time and kept off the market
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Electric arc furnace slag buried in agricultural land and industrial land should be interpreted as industrial waste, and whether it is general waste or toxic waste it must all be completely removed and cleaned up in accordance with the Waste Disposal Act. Because the amount buried in this case is enormous, whether it is rapidly removed in accordance with the law has become an environmental benchmark case for Mayor Lai Ching-te's administration, and the Tainan City Environmental Protection Bureau is requested to carry out rapid removal in accordance with the law.
According to the Chiayi District Prosecutors Office investigation, the Ming Xiang Xin Enterprise Company in Xuejia District, Tainan City receives every month the industrial waste of 6 steel plants, namely Yieh United, Walsin Lihwa, Wei Chih, Shih Chia, Yih Sheng and Hsieh Sheng, and the Tainan City Environmental Protection Bureau must, in its on-site investigation, identify the burial areas of the 6 steel plants and conduct more detailed investigation and sampling, and at the same time must test total dioxins, and must prove whether the 6 steel plants mixed toxic waste baghouse dust together into the slag.
In tracing furnace slag rice, even more attention must be paid to whether it flowed into brown rice, especially since the metal chromium does not easily accumulate in white rice, but very easily accumulates in brown rice.
In recent years, incidents of furnace slag being buried in fish ponds have occurred one after another in the Beimen and Xuejia areas, but the Tainan City Environmental Protection Bureau never strictly demanded removal in the end, causing the incidents to repeat themselves again and again. In this case, Ming Xiang Xin Enterprise Company obtained as much as 200 million-plus yuan in illegal profits over more than four years, and the Tainan City Government has a responsibility to first apply to have the assets seized and to recover the illegal profits, so that similar incidents can be effectively stopped from continuing to occur.
