The plan of the current term mainly focused on works related to management systems of waste collection and removal in surface water bodies, and transforming livestock excrement into resources. On waste collection and removal, the Environmental Protection Administration (now the Ministry of Environment, MOENV), Executive Yuan, has been reorganizing the rights and responsibilities of the management of Taiwan's surface water bodies, and drafting approaches to divide works and operations since 2018. Moreover, aligned with the policy “Salute to the Seas,” the MOENV has been urging government units around Taiwan to implement river cleanup operations and record the results since 2020. To continue improving waste management of surface water bodies across the country in 2023, the plan run the management system of waste collection and removal in surface water bodies and the public-facing website “Cherish the Water,” analyzed data from water body management units, and promoted regulations to review and manage waste collection and removal. Finally, the experience of carrying out these tasks were shared with other departments and branches through meetings in the hopes to maintain the cleanliness of Taiwan’s surface water environment.
On livestock excrement, in order to reduce the discharge of livestock wastewater, the MOENV and the Ministry of Agriculture (formerly the Agriculture Commission) jointly promoted "transforming livestock excrement into resources,” and gradually built "Management System of the Utilization of Livestock Excrement Resources" and "Husbandry Excrement Resources Web” since 2020 so to provide related units with data archiving, review, control and disclosure services, as well as producing statics out of the data. The plan continued to improve functions of these systems, delivering functions to inventory and manage the husbandry industry; manage cases and track resources; report, manage and review soil and groundwater monitoring data; display spatialized data; make matches and disclose results, and maintain the systems.
On waste collection and removal, the plan of the current term enhanced functions of websites “Surface Water Waste Removal Management System” and“Cherish the Water,” adding error-proofing mechanism when producing reports and comprehensive inquiries and water body condition inquiries to the geographical information platform. These new functions were explained to related units through three system operation workshops. Statistics of Taiwan’s surface water waste as of October this year showed that the total amount reached 8,808 tons. Natural waste accounted for the majority, of which wood and bamboo took the largest share (43%), while bags of trash were the largest among man-made wastes. In addition, an introduction to water body waste was added to Cherish the Water website so that the public understands the results of efforts made by different units and is aware of the impact of waste on the environment, in the hopes that they public could respond to the call not to dump trash into streams. Besides, to have a deeper understanding about the division of rights and responsibilities of terrestrial surface water bodies, and implementation processes of related works, interviews were conducted with six units to extract management mechanisms of various units of Taipei City that are worth emulating. Interviews were also conducted with units that had lower scores at reviews or collected more man-made wastes. An overall conclusion of these interviews was that communication with the public about the problem of the disposal of man-made waste should be enhanced, waste hotspots across the country should be limited, and operation areas of units should be adjusted with flexibility. Literature and data on regulations and survey techniques from Taiwan and abroad were gathered, and it was suggested to refer to strategies of waste removal around hotspots implemented in Honolulu, the United States, so to prevent and reduce the amount of wastes. Eight techniques of surface water waste removal were also gathered to assess their suitability. An award ceremony was held to award 24 units that performed well last year as a token of encouragement, and a seminar was held to share and exchange experiences with related units. Finally, in order to improve the efficiency of waste removal management, the review mechanism of year 2024 was adjusted- the score proportion was changed so that more points would be deducted if a unit did not pass random inspections and more points would be added if a unit held river cleaning events.
On livestock excrement, the plan of the current term mapped regulated husbandry operators under the MOENV and the Ministry of Agriculture and found that approximately 2,577 livestock farms had ranch certificate numbers but were not included in the water pollution control program. A total of 289 entries of approved liquor and fiber digestate recycling cases and 151 entries of approved reuse cases was built this year. Approved plans, data of farmlands involved in transforming excrement into resources, functions to upload soil testing data by batch, functions to archive supplementary data such as using larger facilities to replace smaller ones, centralized processing plants, storage buckets and container vehicles, and functions of producing statistical reports for results of promoting recycling were built and added in 2023. With more functions added, the systems became more user-friendly when producing reports and easier to collect more related data. In addition, maintenance of data including case overdue notices, monthly upload of actual usage data by batch, query page of the actual irrigation volume of RWD, screening and query pages of soil and water monitoring data, reminders of test data exceeding standards, reminders of unfilled monitoring data, and uploading of test reports, etc. was carried out continuously. In addition, relevant data and geographical maps such as soil and water quality monitoring, and amounts of flows and rainfalls were also added to facilitate a sectional understanding of information. As the functions of the systems became more comprehensive, two workshops on how to fill reports in the systems were held so that environmental protection departments of counties and cities could fill reports online, in the hopes to that the data in the systems would gradually become more complete, leading to better understanding of the achievements in “transforming livestock excrement into resources.”
On policy information disclosure, in addition to an introduction to how to recycle and pages to promote solar PV and liquor and fiber digestate irrigation fleets, pages were added to explain benefits of irrigation with recycled resources and maintenance instructions on wastewater treatment facilities, and functions of spreadsheets to calculate irrigation demands and benefits were strengthened. One seminar to match demands of farmers and livestock raisers in the system and demonstrate actual irrigation records was organized so to provide guidance on system operation and communicate policies.
The installation and update of functions developed in this term have been completed through two system maintenance tasks. A total of ten cybersecurity scans showed no medium or high risks. In addition, a third-party testing agency was commissioned to conduct a vulnerability scan which showed no medium or high risks either. During the system development period, monthly check of personal computers used by individual personnel involved in the plan also showed no abnormal results.
The plan hoped that the development of information systems could enhance the management mechanism, integrate various data, develop investigation techniques and push for progress in the works of waste removal, so that the waste management mechanism could be improved and realize the vision of zero waste in Taiwan’s rivers. On livestock excrement, it is hoped that related information could be shared among units so that resources could be used in a sustainable manner and promote the efficiency in transforming livestock excrement into resources.
