Remediation as a Front? Environment Ministry's Erren River Project Accused of Budget Padding and Falsifying Research Costs, Favoring Specific Subcontracted Agencies

On October 23, 2024, during the Legislative Yuan's review of the Ministry of Environment's annual budget, opposition lawmaker Wang Yu-min and others exposed that the ministry's budget for the waste remediation of the Erren River (bordering Tainan and Kaohsiung in Taiwan Province) was padded with high amounts of repetitive outsourced research fees. Lawmakers pointed out that the remediation of the Erren River has been ongoing for decades, with countless reports already stacked high. However, the ministry, led by Peng Chi-ming, insisted on spending millions of public funds on repetitive outsourced studies, which they criticized as administrative redundancy and fiscal waste. Critics accused the ministry of failing to allocate funds to actual physical waste removal, instead prioritizing outsourcing fees that potentially funneled public money to politically connected academic or private consulting groups. Peng's defense that this was necessary for "comprehensive logging and public-private cooperation" failed to convince the legislature, resulting in a significant budget integrity controversy.