New Taipei snubs environmental study in project

The China Post
New Taipei snubs environmental study in project
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/local/taipei/2013/09/05/388117/New-Taipei.htm
By Joy Lee ,The China Post
September 5, 2013

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- New Taipei yesterday announced that construction of the Tamsui-Taipei expressway will continue despite a court revoking its environmental impact assessment (EIA).

The Taipei High Administrative Court yesterday ruled to revoke the approved EIA conducted by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) on June 22, 2011 for the construction of the expressway.

The New Taipei City Government said that the construction will continue and more information will be provided for the EPA's reference to allow it to propose another EIA.

EPA Minister Shen Shih-hung said that he has not received the court verdict yet, so he cannot comment on this issue.

Yeh Jiunn-horng (葉俊宏), the director-general of the EPA Comprehensive Planning Department, said that after the EPA receives the court verdict, the officials will talk to lawyers about whether an appeal should be filed or another EIA be conducted.

Environmentalists Wang Chung-ming and Tsui Tsu-hsin, who filed the appeal, said that the EPA should follow the court's instructions and not file an appeal.

Wang and Tsui said that the New Taipei Government should stop expressway construction and land expropriation and come up with another development plan for the Tamsui area that will also protect the environment.

Chang Yu-yin, the lawyer who represents the environmental protection organizations, said that the expressway will be built along the Mangrove Nature Reserve, but the expressway is less than 1 meter away from the reserve, which places the mangrove reserve at great risk.

“The verdict shows that the judge values the idea of environmental protection,” Chang said.

Some Tamsui residents, however, were not satisfied with the court's verdict.

A resident surnamed Liu said that the expressway could be the solution to the severe traffic jams during rush hours and weekends.

“I am stuck in traffic jams every day and on weekends,” Liu said, “and with this verdict, there will be no solution to this problem.”

According to New Taipei City Government, the Tamsui-Taipei expressway, which is scheduled to be finished in 2016, is a 4.7-kilometer-long expressway that will be built along the Tamsui riverbank and the Mangrove Nature Reserve and National Wetland.

Local residents filed a petition to the Cabinet's Petitions and Appeals Committee but the petition was denied. With help from environmentalists and lawyers, they filed an administrative litigation to the Taipei High Administrative Court, which led to the its decision to revoke the EIA of the expressway construction.

According to New Taipei City Government, housing prices of the Tamsui area depend on the expressway construction because more and more people are moving to or visiting the Tamsui area, causing traffic jams during rush hours and weekends. Light rail construction has begun in the Tamsui area and is expected to be completed in 2018.

Construction Could Continue: Lawyer

A lawyer said that even though the EIA is the key point to launching a construction project, as long as the development activity permission is still valid, the construction could still be carried out.

According to the lawyer, the court's verdict to revoke the EIA will cause a problem for the government in terms of the construction of the expressway, and it is up to the EPA to decide if the EIA should remain valid or to follow the court's verdict and revoke the EIA.

Environmentalists hail ‘Tambei’ ruling

Taipei Times
Environmentalists hail 'Tambei' ruling
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2013/09/05/2003571385/2

ROAD RAGE:Local residents and environmentalists vigorously oppose the Tambei Expressway project, as it would encroach on the Mangrove Forest Preservation Area

By Jason Pan  /  Staff writer, with CNA

Environmental groups yesterday hailed as an important victory a decision by the Taipei High Administrative Court rejecting an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report for the proposed Tamsui-Taipei expressway construction project in New Taipei City (新北市).

Although the ruling can still be appealed, environmental activists were happy with the court’s decision and called on the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) to withdraw the EIA and not appeal.

The New Taipei City Government had proposed building a "Tambei Expressway" (淡北道路 Tamsui-Taipei Expressway) along the eastern shore of the Tamsui River.

At present, Highway No. 2 is the only major artery linking Taipei to New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水) and the northeast coastal area. It is clogged with heavy traffic on weekday rush hours, as well as on weekends and holidays.

The road runs along the narrow Zhuwei Corridor (竹圍走廊), which is geographically confined by the Tamsui River to the west and the Tatun Mountains to the east. The Taipei MRT Tamsui Line runs in this corridor, from Zhuwei MRT Station northward to Tamsui MRT Station.

Local residents and environmentalists vigorously opposed the expressway project, as it would encroach on the nearby Mangrove Forest Preservation Area.

After the EPA convened meetings to evaluate the project’s environmental impact, the EIA committee announced its conditional approval for the expressway in July 2011.

However, local residents Wang Chung-ming (王鐘銘) and Chen Fu-chi (陳福齊) organized a petition in August of that year seeking to nullify the EIA report on the grounds the project would negatively impact an important and sensitive natural environment and therefore it required a second-stage EIA.

However, the Executive Yuan’s Petitions and Appeals Committee rejected their petition in February last year.

Wang and members of the Green Party Taiwan filed a lawsuit with the Taipei High Administrative Court in April last year.

Local residents called yesterday’s decision a major victory.

"We hope every EIA case in the future can be evaluated and scrutinized in a thorough and prudent manner. It must be done with participation and input by local residents to protect their natural environment," Wang said.

Other residents were delighted with the decision, saying justice had been served, but New Taipei City Councilor Tsai Chin-hsien (蔡錦賢) was disappointed.

"We have wasted three or four years already. With the construction set to start, the court decision has negated years of effort by many people," Tsai said.

"The court did not respect the wishes of local residents. It is an unreasonable ruling, as the court does not understand the suffering of local residents due to frequent traffic jams," the independent councilor added.

EPA Department of Comprehensive Planning head Yeh Chun-hung (葉俊宏) said his office would study the court judgement and would appeal if there is a possibility of overturning the decision.

He said the EPA could return to a first-stage EIA or go into second-stage EIA, pending its appraisal of the judgement.

Meanwhile, Taipei City Government spokesman Chang Chi-chiang (張其強) said the city government respected the court ruling and would not begin construction unless the project passes an EIA.

The New Taipei City Government, on the other hand, said it would continue construction and would provide the EPA with more information as a basis for a second-stage EIA.

Additional reporting by Lai Hsiao-tung and Wu Liang-yi

Nuclear waste poses huge problem

By Wang Chung-ming 王鐘銘

The Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant crisis taught the world one thing: The danger of nuclear waste is just as serious as having nuclear reactors in operation. Two years after the disaster in Japan, Taiwanese should not only insist that construction of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant be halted, but that the government should face up to the fact that it is incapable of handling nuclear waste and seriously think about how to solve this intractable problem. The nation needs to come up with concrete and feasible policies for nuclear waste as soon as possible.

Environmental impact assessments (EIA) on management policies for radioactive waste are a crucial part of this process. However, the government has been lazy and has overlooked the formulation and assessment of such management policies. In May 2011, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) did not tell concerned civic groups what they were planning to do and secretly held the first-ever task force meeting on the matter.

After learning in November about the clandestine meeting, these groups attended the next meeting, which erupted into a dispute. Surprisingly, no other meetings on the matter were held after that. Does the government think that dealing with nuclear waste is a policy that only involves government officials and that the public should be excluded?

The environmental impact assessment submitted to the EPA by the AEC is riddled with contradictions and misinformation. When this document came out, civic groups identified five major problems. First, it is impossible to process nuclear waste outside of Taiwan, but neither is it feasible to process it within Taiwan because of local geological conditions.

Second, spent fuel rod storage pools have reached their legal capacities, increasing the risks of radioactive accidents.

Third, dry storage facilities are not the answer to the problem of overstoring spent fuel rods in these pools.
Fourth, despite precedents overseas of radioactive matter leaking into groundwater, the EIA failed to address this risk.

And fifth, forcibly storing low-level radioactive waste in less developed remote areas runs counter to the principle of promoting equal development for all regions.

It has been almost a year-and-a-half since the groups raised these five questions, but the AEC has yet to provide an answer, and the EPA has not taken the council to task over this. EIAs for nuclear waste policies are very important, but instead of following up on the matter or offering an answer or response to these groups, the AEC and the EPA have chosen to bury their heads in the sand and pretend the problem with nuclear waste does not exist.

Apart from highlighting how inefficient the government is and how it shirks responsibility, these phenomena are also proof that nuclear waste is an issue that has no solution. Since there is no solution, the only option is to immediately abolish nuclear power and stop the production of more nuclear waste.

The state-run Taiwan Power Co and the AEC often say that nuclear waste is a fact and there is nothing that can be done about it. In doing so, they are treating nuclear waste that has yet to be produced as something that already exists.

Such discourse is tantamount to blackmailing the public and is aimed at making people think they have no choice but to accept only one way of dealing with nuclear waste.

Trying to reduce nuclear waste levels was one out of four of the guiding principles for the management of radioactive waste and this is aimed at lowering output volume. However, the environmental impact statement only mentioned incineration and compression as methods for reducing nuclear waste and completely ignored other, more effective methods.

In its environmental impact statement, the AEC provided numbers on current and projected levels of high-level radioactive waste.

According to these estimates, assuming the nation’s four nuclear power stations were to operate for another 40 years, we have to date already produced approximately 42 percent of the total projected level of radioactive waste.

Viewed from another perspective, it means that if nuclear power were abolished immediately, 60 percent of the projected nuclear waste will never be produced.

Apart from coming up with ways to solve the problem of that 40 percent existing nuclear waste, the public needs to do one even more important thing: Stop operations of the three existing nuclear power plans and halt construction of the fourth. This way the nation could minimize its output volume at the source and stop nuclear waste from being produced ever again.

Translated by Drew Cameron


This article was published in Taipei Times:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2013/03/20/2003557507/2

Taipei Times: Environmentalists rally against Tamkang Bridge

Environmentalists rally against Tamkang Bridge

RUINING THE VIEW:Protesters said the proposed Tamkang Bridge would destroy the vaunted Tamsui sunset view that has been ranked as one of the great ‘Eight Views of Taiwan’

Wed, Sep 28, 2011
By Lee I-chia / Staff Reporter

A small number of concerned residents rallied in front of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) in Taipei yesterday, calling on the government to clarify the construction plans for Tamkang Bridge (淡江大橋) and include more civic participation in the construction process.

Green Party central executive committee member Wang Chung-ming (王鐘銘) led about 10 people in the rally.

The bridge will span the Tamsui River (淡水河) in New Taipei City (新北市), linking Bali Township (八里) and Tamsui Township.

The project received conditional approval in 1999 from the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) committee, but construction was postponed because of the Tambei Expressway, which did not get approval until June.

The Directorate-General of Highways said the bridge would be convenient for residents, boost economic development and help ease holiday traffic. However, the area has been considered a famous scenic spot and one of the “Eight Views of Taiwan” (台灣八景) for decades. It is feared that the proposed bridge would obstruct the view.

Wang said the plan would ruin the scenery and questioned the procedural legitimacy of separating the bridge construction plan from the expressway construction plan. The government should have a total development plan for the area and evaluate the impact on and benefits to the natural environment, traffic, culture and economy as a whole, rather than individual segments.

“Some people say the sunset could still be seen on the new bridge, but actually the unique part of the sunset in Tamsui is that you can see the landscape of Bali and Tamsui on both sides of the river mouth, with the sun setting into the ocean,” a local resident surnamed Yan (顏) said.

Following the rally, an EIA meeting on the environmental impact analysis for the alterations to the original plan was held at the EPA’s headquarters in the afternoon.

The main alteration was to widen the bridge from 33m to 44m to include two-way light rail tracks, moving a highway ramp 500m south and changes to the interchange design.

During the meeting, two local residents and a representative from an environmental organization said the public hearings lacked civic participation because they were not announced early enough and very few people attended them.

During the discussion, two committee members asked whether the plan required a new EIA evaluation, because the environment and situation may have changed over the past decade. They said widening the bridge was not a minor alteration.

The meeting concluded that the developers must provide additional information, including an impact assessment for nearby nature reserves and riverbanks, impact analyses for different periods during the day, more public input and public hearings and an evaluation of the safety of water activities in the area.

Taipei Times:

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2011/09/28/2003514393