The EPA has striven to ensure sustainable and safe soil and groundwater environments across Taiwan. A piece of idle land in Rende District, Tainan, was found to have soil pollution with heavy metals like copper, lead, cadmium, zinc, and nickel as well as illegal waste dumping. Waste clearing and pollution remediation were done under Tainan Environmental Bureaus close supervision, resulting in a restored soil environment.

On 20 May 2011, Tainan City Hall announced the site as a listed soil pollution control site based on the Soil and Groundwater Pollution Remediation Act. The EPA later listed it as a remediation site on 18 April 2012. The polluters were ordered by Tainan Environmental Bureau to clear out 734.81 metric tons of wastes and carry out a remediation plan, which lasted eight years. During this period, scholars and experts invited by the Bureau held meetings regularly and followed up on the remediation procedures. The Bureaus inspection in March 2021 found that heavy metal pollutants in the soil were within the soil pollution control limits as well as monitoring limits. The EPA delisted the land on 8 June 2021. This pollution site is an example of compound remediation because of the illegal dumping, and an area of over 2,200 square meters is now restored and cleaned up.

The EPA stressed that land users, managers, and owners have to step in to uphold environmental quality and shoulder responsibilities of soil management. Only then will the risk of contaminating idle land be lowered and environmental degradation prevented.

Excerpt from Major Environmental Policies, July 2021