I would like to seriously protest against certain politicians and media figures who have been constantly attacking and vilifying me on the grounds that I oppose the plan to upgrade the Suhua Highway.
The Suhua Highway upgrade plan is aimed at improving the condition of dangerous parts of the road, some of which are in Yilan County. Being a resident of Yilan myself, I of course have no objection whatsoever to having a safer road to drive home on.
However, geologists have pointed out many times that most of the geological information being used to assess the Suhua Highway upgrade project is 30 years old. taken when the North-Link Rail Line was being built. They have also said that, compared with large-scale tunnel construction projects carried out overseas, the amount of money spent on geological surveys for this project is much too low, at less than 1 percent of the total budget. In the case of the Channel Tunnel between England and France, for example, 7 percent of the total budget was spent on geological surveys. In contrast, government departments in charge of developing such projects in Taiwan have never paid attention to the importance of geological surveys.
Sufficient information from geological surveys would be beneficial to the speed of construction, the safety of construction teams, the safety of road users and the health of the nation’s finances. It is for these reasons that, as I stressed in an environmental impact assessment meeting, I hope that the government will carry out detailed geological drilling and tests and set up a professional disaster relief team to deal with any emergency that might occur in one of the tunnels. However, those in charge of development insist that detailed geological surveys will have to wait until construction has started and I find this extremely unreasonable.
What worries me even more is that officials and elected representatives keep using safety as an excuse to push forward the Suhua Highway upgrade project, which is only a band-aid solution. Meanwhile, two proposed laws — the draft national land plan act (國土計劃法) and geology act (地質法) — which would really contribute to countering geological dangers, are still a long, long way from being passed into law.
I would therefore like to call on the government once more to think about the national coffers and the safety of the public, and stress again that upgrading the Suhua Highway needs adequate first-hand geological information. Environmental assessment committee members, geology experts and academics must be allowed to perform detailed inspections before the plan gets passed.
At the same time, I also urge lawmakers of the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) to make sure the proposed draft national land plan and geology act get passed as soon as possible.
Tien Chiu-chin is a Democratic Progressive Party legislator.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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