To celebrate the core value of the UN's World Soil Day, the EPA held a seminar on 5 December 2020 to exchange and promote prevention and remediation strategies against soil and groundwater pollution. Representatives from government agencies, academia and industries were invited to exchange ideas on three major action plans in thanks for what the soil has been providing to humans.

For two decades, the EPA has been a soil doctor and been through innumerable pollution incidents. Through the implementation of four major policy areas, namely regulations and systems, soil and water management, key technologies, and remediation and rehabilitation, the EPA has provided remediation services all over the nation. As of 31 December 2020, a total of 8,886 remediation sites had been announced, and 7,456 of which had been improved and taken off the control list. These represent a 83.9% improvement rate, and completed the mission to revive the soil. For the next stage, the EPA is aiming to prevent soil pollutions­, that is to protect soil and keep it from being further harmed.

For this purpose, the EPA has proposed the following three action plans:

Expediting the push for site improvement and the policy tools for site delisting actively formulating strategies to manage 58 sites that require expedited improvement and conduct site-by-site surveys to assist the site polluters and concerned parties. To date, remediation work has been successfully launched at two sites, and five sites have been included in remediation projects for improvement.

Compiling and promoting soil and water conservation technologies providing a channel for polluted sites to find technically capable, reliable enterprises for remediation through a three-stage process: compilation of technologies used in remediation cases in Taiwan, announcement and certification of the remediation technologies and capabilities, and environmental technology verification.

Farmland pollution prevention strategies integrating cross-ministerial data tools in three aspects: gradually ascertaining the distribution characteristics of the pollution sources, clarifying transmission routes and water quality dynamics and confirming the degree of the impacts on farmlands. The EPA will promote early warning systems for farmland pollution prevention and expects to complete the improvement for all polluted farmlands in Taiwan by the end of 2021.

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