To remediate the soil and groundwater pollution in Taiwan, the Environmental Protection Administration has begun the collection of the soil and groundwater pollution remediation fees from the manufacturers and importers of officially announced substances in accordance with the amounts manufactured and imported by such enterprises in November of 2001. The remediation fees is used in the soil and groundwater investigations and remediation projects, providing undeniable benefits to environmental protection. Since the officially announced chemical substances are mainly organic substances, the remediation fees is mainly collected from the petrochemical industry. Therefore, the industry continued to reflect that the fee sources should be more fair and reasonable. In response with the industries’s demand and to reflect the current statures of illegal dumping sites, a new version of the collection regulations was implemented in July of 2011. Other than the originally regulated substances, steel, coal, copper, nickel, and industrial wastes from the specified 13 industries were added to the regulated substances. Afterwards, the revised regulations were promulgated on December 30, 2016 and were implemented since July 1, 2017. The wastes from the specified 13 industries were canceled, and changed to the designated 66 wastes items and corresponding codes. After the revision, the number of fee-payers has increased approximately from 4,000 to 7,500 and an average of 1.2 billion NT dollars of remediation fee is collected each year. A total of 14.02 billion NT dollars of remediation fees had been collected since November of 2001. This year's execution results are as follows :
(I) A total of 32,829 cases were audited for completeness, whereas 12,759 cases were audited manually for correctness. For those who were audited for completeness, 0% were found incorrect by the second inspection team, whereas 0.02% of the cases audited manually for correctness were found incorrect; showing minimal differences between the auditing team and the second inspection team. 65 cases of refund application for insurance purchases and pollution prevention projects in 2017 were filed this year. Among them, about 146 million NT dollars was refunded.
(II) 300 cases of on-site auditing was completed, which include160correct declaration cases and 140 incorrect cases required for follow-up declaration to recover the unpaid fees. 66 sites of refund application for pollution prevention projects in 2017 were visited.
(III) A simplified scheme for the collection of remediation fees (convenience measures) has been planned, and a mechanism for "advancement measures for electronic processing at the verification (review) side" has been provided.
(IV) 4 consultation hotlines were set up to maintain smooth communication channels. Collecting the industry’s problems in reporting operational procedures for reference to future policy changes.
