President Chen Shui-bian's (
After seeing Taiwan raped for the last half century, an experience which has turned an island once fabled for its beauty into an industrial slum, it would be nice to acclaim Chen's something-less-than-final decision. That, alas, is something that cannot be done. This is not because the dam should be built, actually the geological arguments against its construction are compelling. But the decision to build the dam or not is inextricably bound up not only with other environmental issues but with economic issues the scale of which entail far more public debate before intelligent policy making -- policy making that can find that elusive balance between what the people want and what they need -- can take place.
Chen's shelving of the dam was piggy-backed on a promise of better tap water for Kaohsiung residents, which suggest that the purpose of the dam was to supply drinking water to the greater Kaohsiung area. It is surprising to find Chen implicitly endorsing the previous government's fictional justification for the dam. What the dam is really needed for is to supply water for the industrial development of southern Taiwan. This incorporates such projects as the Pinnan Industrial Zone (
There is perhaps little point in rehashing the arguments against Pinnan and the naphtha cracker again. Is there anybody in Taiwan, except those who stand to profit financially, who really thinks that what Taiwan needs is more smokestack industries, especially when their economic viability depends on the artificially low cost of the power and water they consume?
Scrapping Pinnan and the naphtha cracker, however, raises the question of exactly how southern Taiwan is to develop. Farming is hardly a viable alternative. Eco-tourism in the Chiku Lagoon area -- where the Pinnan project is planned -- isn't going to sustain too many people. If the southern counties are not to remain forever the poorer sisters of their northern counterparts, industrial development is needed and almost everybody's favorite southern development strategy is to bring more high-tech industry south. And that raises significant problems. While high-tech industry might be less polluting than the smokestack variety -- and some would say that it simply pollutes in a different way -- it tends to be a prodigious user of water. Where is this water going to come from? Some have suggested that killing the Pinnan project would free up large quantities of water to quench the science park's thirst. The Environmental Protection Administration has, however, pointed out that the lion's share of available water was to go to the science park anyway and halting the Pinnan development wouldn't make much difference.
Whether the EPA is to be believed here is beside the point. The equation is simple. The south has to develop. Development, even -- in fact especially -- of the high-tech variety needs water. The south is short of water. So if the Meinung dam is not to be built, where is this water to come from? This is not to say that the dam must be built. Rather it is to say that shelving the dam and justifying it with talk about providing more drinking water for Kaohsiung from elsewhere is not getting anywhere near the nub of the issue of how to develop southern Taiwan.
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