Millions of tons of furnace ballast in Qishan pollutes agricultural land. After six years of hard work, sewage spills over and seriously damages the environment.

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For six years, the dispute over "burying agricultural land with furnace ballast" in the forest in the Qishan District of Kaohsiung City has not yet been resolved. Since 2014, whenever there is continuous rain or instant showers in summer, the soil moisture in the ballast backfill will be oversaturated and the milky yellow sewage will flow to the farmland next door.

In August this year (2019), sewage reappeared, spilling over into the surrounding banana, papaya and coconut orchards. In early September, the sewage receded, leaving a thick layer of sediment in the fields and ditches, leaving farmers with heartache. The biggest victim of this is 76-year-old farmer Lin Zhengnan, who complained bitterly to the reporter. "when the sentence was handed down the year before last, the High Administrative Court said that the waste buried in the soil was waste and asked the municipal government to restrict the transportation of the industry in accordance with the law, but up to now, the industry is still building and mending the fence, and it is clear that it will drag on forever!"

After days of heavy rain, the banana garden on the east side of the ballast field was overflowed by milky yellow sewage, leaving a thick layer of unknown sediment. (the anti-furnace ballast self-rescue meeting in Da Lin Li was photographed on August 15, 108.) the farmland changed from the waste garden to the Grand Canyon and finally became the furnace ballast landfill.

Xiao Gong Shengjun, located in the forest of Qishan in Kaohsiung, is only a small temple at a three-fork intersection, but because the local plague was suppressed 70 years ago, he is the center of faith in two nearby villages.

75 meters northeast of Shengjun Temple, there is a piece of 7 hectares of agricultural land. Sand and gravel was stolen in 1996, digging a deep pit with a total area of about 5.2 hectares and a depth of more than 20 meters. This kind of ponds, often found in remote farmland in Gaoping area, has long been jokingly called the "Grand Canyon" by people, while the deep pit in the forest has later become an important source of water for residents to fish and farmers to irrigate.

In May 2013, when rice ears in southern Taiwan were golden, residents found a large truck that had been fighting day and night into a deep pit and dumped into an unknown landfill. Zheng Miaozhen, president of the Dalinli Anti-waste Ballast self-Rescue Association, said that between May 2013 and June 2014, these pits were indeed filled with 1 million tons of furnace stones bought from Zhonglian Resources and produced in the steelmaking process of China Iron and Steel Company by Huang Yingyi, landlord and head of Jianfa's construction, and Dai Wenqing, head of Wanda Materials and Technology.

The slag backfill area is as high as 5.2 hectares away from agriculture and pastoral life, and the countryside in Dalin is not calm.

In fact, as early as 1999, the Kaohsiung municipal government approved Sinosteel to register the steelmaking ballast as a "product" in the factory registration certificate. Therefore, when the Kaohsiung Environmental Protection Bureau received a report from the public in 2013, the furnace ballast buried in the forest farmland could not be disposed of by the "waste cleaning Law." At that time, the Kaohsiung municipal government turned over the law and finally imposed a fine of NT $60,000 on the operators by the Lands Bureau in accordance with the "Regional Planning Law."

However, a mere 60,000 yuan could not stop the furnace ballast from moving forward on the farmland. After dumping for a year and a month, the original pit was filled up.

Looking back on the previous life of this piece of ballast backfilled farmland, it began with rice fields, banana plantations and pig farms. Later, after the decline of agriculture in the 1970s and the government's policy of leaving grazing in Gaopingxi in the 1990s, it finally became a landfill for stealing sand and gravel pits and the steel industry. Since then, the forest has become the most restless countryside in Qishan.

On September 8, 102, the operator has been backfilling the ballast in the sand pit for nearly half a year, and the pool water has changed from green to light blue. (photo provided: Dalinli Anti-Ballast self-Rescue Association) Sinosteel subsidiary: Ballast can pave roads and build houses.

Zhonglian Resources, a subsidiary of Sinosteel Group, was initially responsible for the use innovation and value-added work of furnace stone, a by-product of Sinosteel, and later expanded its business scope to the areas of resource regeneration and pollution control, such as the processing and trading of furnace powder, the cleaning of waste pollution sites, the pollution treatment of soil and groundwater, and so on. That is why Sinosteel's hearth stone will be sold to Jianfa and ten thousand materials through Zhonglian Resources.

Xu Dengke, director of the Resources and Technology Office of Zhonglian, explained that the furnace ballast, known in the industry as "furnace stone," is a by-product of Sinosteel's consistent production of iron and steel, and as long as it is stabilized, it can generally be used in roads, artificial reefs and wave absorbing blocks. "for example, a 1.7-kilometer section of dense graded asphalt concrete has been laid on Nanxing Road in Kaohsiung City. because of the addition of hearth stone, it is particularly strong and durable, and it has also won the affirmation of the 16th Gold Award for Public works."

In addition, Xu Dengke further explained: "We have also successfully developed permeable asphalt. Some sections of National Highway 6 and National Highway 1 have been laid to avoid stagnant water when it rains and reduce water fog caused by high-speed driving."

The Supervisory Yuan corrects the Kaohsiung city government that slag is not allowed to backfill farmland.

However, the significance and value of furnace ballast as a product can not allay the worries of the residents at all. In May 2014, the Dalinli Anti-waste Furnace Ballast self-help Association, the Zunhuai Culture and Education Foundation and the Environmental Action team of Tainan Community University went to the Supervisory Yuan to present their complaints. In February of the following year, the Supervisory Yuan put forward a correction case against the Kaohsiung municipal government: "the Kaohsiung municipal government knows full well that agricultural land is not allowed to backfill steelmaking ballast such as converter stone according to law, and the backfilling area continues to expand by 5.2ha, the quantity exceeds 990000 metric tons (about 25950 vehicles), which seriously damages the public trust of the government, and there is indeed a violation, so the government proposes to correct it in accordance with the law."

However, if the correction is corrected, the dispute still cannot be resolved. The key point is that the Kaohsiung city government, Sinosteel, Zhonglian Resources, and the industry all agree that hearth stone is a "product." Zhonglian Resources even called it a "geodetic project" to backfill stolen sand and gravel pits. Moreover, "after the backfill is covered with soil, the vegetation is sparse and green, the flowers are in full bloom in the area where Persian chrysanthemum is planted, and the wild bananas are fruitful, and the earth has come back to life."

Kaohsiung High Court: slag is waste and needs to be cleared away

Huang Huan-chang, convener of the Environmental Action team of Tainan Community University, responded: "We know that farmland backfilling is backfilling clean soil. Is furnace ballast soil?" Furnace ballast is not soil, but waste. Just like the refrigerator is an asset and a product at home, when the refrigerator is thrown on the farmland, it is waste. The self-help Association and the residents also agreed that since it is "waste" to be buried in agricultural land, it cannot be regarded as a "product" and finally decided to sue the court.

On May 31, 2017, the Kaohsiung High Administrative Court ruled that the furnace ballast was regarded as "waste". Qiu Zhengqiang, then president of the Kaohsiung High Administrative Court, specially answered the media publicly: "in this case, furnace ballast should be defined as' waste'. Since it is waste, it should be applied by the waste cleaning Law." In other words, the competent authority has the obligation to order the actor to remove it. "

The verdict is useless? Millions of tons of furnace ballast has occupied agricultural land so far.

Eight days after the ruling of the Kaohsiung High Administrative Court, the Kaohsiung Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau quickly "sent a letter to Huang Yingyi, Dai Wenqing, Jianfa Company, Wanda Company, and Zhonglian Resources Company to clean up and submit the clean-up plan within a time limit." However, the operators did not accept the appeal, and two years later, the slag still occupied the farmland.

Acting director Wu Jiaan said: "in accordance with the relevant provisions of the waste removal Law, we require Huang surname operators, Dai surname operators and related companies to complete the clean-up within one year and six months."