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Project Presentation

Category

◆ Category participated: Local environmental issue

Neighborhood description

Sanzhuku Valley

◆ Description of local neighborhood

Sanzhuku Sanitary Landfill Site is located in Sanzhuku Valley between the southeast corner of Nankang District of Taipei City and Shenkeng Township of Taipei Count. It is a bar-shaped valley rising in the south and lowering in the north. The outlet at downstream is located in the north of the site. Nanshen Road running along the valley is the outer beltway linking up Jiuzhuang Street where the Jiuzhuang Elementary School is located. The site is located in a mountainous area where the Nankang tea is very famous. The Osmanthus Season attracts many visitors to taste tea here every year.

Project overview

◆ Project plan overview

The swimming class of our school is held at the warm-water pool inside the landfill. It is a feedback facility. The landfill also funded some of the school facilities with the Sanzhuku Sanitary Landfill Site Feedback Fund. Though we discovered that these facilities are fed by the landfill because garbage in Taipei City is buried here, we seldom see garbage trucks and perceive no smell in the neighborhood. Out of curiosity, we asked the following questions

1.  How does the landfill look like now?
2.  What are the views of citizens living in the       neighborhood?
3.  How does the landfill monitor the environmental quality       of the neighborhood?
4.  What is the future development of the landfill?

Interview reporting

The Internet

The school network links to the Taipei City Education Network Center via a 100MB optical fiber link. When we were at school, we collated data, designed webpage and made drawings in the computer classroom during lunchtime. Also, we also stored images and text records on the supervisor’s personal website.

Overcoming problems

(1) Inadequate time and prior knowledge

★Though we wanted to participate in the contest as early as in September, we began the planning of topic and contents in November. Miss Liang, the supervisor, soon finished the duty assignment. As we were in the same class, it was very convenient to communicate. Miss Liang asked us to collect data in different areas and decide on the topic before drafting the interview questions. Though Miss Liang and us had written down the questions in advance, we discovered that during the interviews the waste disposal involved different professional knowledge, technologies and special terms that we did not know, so we just learned, made notes and listened during the interviews. It was not until we reviewed the notes and watched the video again when we returned to school that we began to understand some of this knowledge, technologies and special terms.

★We met at the computer classroom at lunchtime or free time during the activity session to finish most part of the work. Before the interviews, Miss Liang asked us to decide on the contents, to make a thank you card with Presto! Print Magic, and to request responsible students collecting relevant data in advance. Of course, we needed to write down the schedule on the web. Though the work was laborious, we learned a lot from the project, and it was fun.

(2) Ignorance to webpage design

In the beginning of the project, we learned only some basics of the PhotoImpact, and we did not know how to make a webpage. Miss Liang asked us to finish the text first. Then, she showed us how to plot a webpage on the Namo. Every one of us drew some lovely pigs or scenes, and Miss Liang chose the one by Yu-wen as the backdrop of our webpage after making some modifications. After putting the text in the webpage, Miss Liang made some adjustments again, and the outline of the webpage was finished. After the selection, w adjusted and edited the pictures with the PhotoImpact before putting them in position. Then, the work finally looked better.

(3) Difficulty in transcribing speeches into text

Transcribing speeches into text was probably the most difficult part of the entire the project. After interviewing those people and writing down what we have learned from the interviews, we needed to review the interview video again and again and to refresh our memory of the interviews before we could finalize what was to be presented in the webpage. Also, we needed to collect other information. We really wish that there was a machine that could automatically transcribe those conversations into text on the computer. This way, we could have saved a lot of labor.

Excepts of learning from the interview

A visit on the landfill

We have learned a lot about environmental protection from the interviews, including;

1.  Methane gas is toxic and smells like someone “breaking wind”. It can be used as fuel at a      certain quantity.
2.  It is collected with the methane gas pipe and can be consumed.
3. The landfill has disinfection and deodorization facilities, gas release shaft and deodorizers; and      it turns the soil every day.
4.  Building a sports park is the restoration plan of the landfill. At present, there is 9 ha of land for      the landfill, and the restoration has just begun.
5.  There must be a landfill in Taipei City. It must be big enough, assessed and produce the least      effect on the neighborhood... After all, resource recycling and waste reduction are really very      important.

Environmental monitoring observation

We went to the office of the Sanzhuku Sanitary Landfill Site, waiting for their personnel to take us to see some experiments and tests related to environmental monitoring.

The appearance of the air quality monitoring vehicle is very special. There is a nest-like instrument on the roof for testing the dust fall, aerosol, wind direction and wind speed of a particular place. It seems that the instrument is multifunctional. Then, they took us to the Sanzhuku River to test the quality of the river water. People think that the river water must be very dirty and stinky. By contrast, it was clean and clear. First, we measured the flow speed, which was about 0.24m/second. Then, we took some water samples. After that, we went to the sewage treatment plant. We were very excited when we heard that the smell at the plant was like that of the fermented bean curd. I didn’t feel the smell was like fermented bean curd, it was more like petroleum to me. So, I was disappointed! Of course, we did do our homework before the visit. In our research, we discovered that the fly index test was applied to measure the cleanliness of a particular environment. The fly counting grill was the instrument that used to count the number of flies passing by a particular area over a particular period time, and it was fun! I have learned a lot and experienced many interesting things from the visit.

Interview with the head of borough

In the interview, I discovered that Mr. Chen has been the head of borough for 13 years. Sanzhuku was a coalmine, and local citizens reacted to the landfill project very actively. Fortunately, citizens have a good impression on the landfill now and approve the use of the site. The landfill was supposed to expire in 2003 after a ten-year term; now it is extended to the end of December 2010.