The Cabinet is drafting a special bill to ban land development, road construction or repair, farming or residence in certain areas in the wake of the devastating flooding caused by Tropical Storm Mindulle, which killed 29 people and left 12 others missing.
"We're thinking of adopting a two-pronged approach. In addition to cutting down on or outlawing land development in mountain, coastal and flood-prone areas, we'd offer incentives to residents living in such areas to encourage them to relocate or to sell those lands to the government," Premier Yu Shyi-kun told reporters yesterday afternoon.
While the special bill is designed to apply to those areas damaged by Mindulle, Yu said that the draft bills of a coastline law (海岸法), a geological law (地質法) and a national land development law (國土計劃法), which the Cabinet has already sent to the legislature, are designed to prevent excessive land development in the future.
Yu made the remarks after a three?hour closed-door meeting with environmental protection groups.
The groups submitted four petitions to Yu. One petition called for the termination of the NT$96.2 billion freeway construction project to connect Suao in Ilan County with Hualien County. Another called for the reevaluation of a or a halt to the construction of four artificial lakes, while another asked that a request for an additional NT$49.9 billion for the partially-finished Fourth Nuclear Power Plant be rejected.
According to Council for Eco-nomic Planning and Development Vice Chairman Chang Ching-sen (張景森), farming in mountainous areas should be banned because of the large-scale damage it does to the environment.
"Agricultural overdevelopment in mountainous areas is anachron-istic," he said. "Agricultural activities in such areas should be outlawed, while tourism should be encouraged because it does not cause as much environmental damage as farming does."
Chang also hinted that the government might not repair the Central Cross-Island Highway, which was damaged once again by falling rocks, landslides and mudflows triggered by Mindulle between Kukuan and the Techi Reservoir.
"We will not fix public roads damaged by Mindulle if the roads lead to areas where soil conservation should be maintained," he said. "While a team of professional geologists will assess whether the highway does lead to such places, the answer is already evident after looking at satellite photos."
Minister without Portfolio Lin Sheng-feng (林盛豐) said that Yu has ordered a team of experts to pre-sent a preliminary report about the damage and propose alternative plans in two weeks and a more comprehensive report within three months.
"We don't want to spend a lot of money to build an infrastructure which lasts for only a few years or cannot withstand another natural disaster as powerful as Mindulle," Lin said.
The Cabinet is also planning to establish a new department, an environmental resources ministry, to tackle such issues as river dredging.
With environmentalists' calling for the Suao-Hualien freeway pro-ject to be scrapped, Yu instructed the Cabinet's No. 5 National Freeway Response Taskforce to listen to the voices of environmental groups, county councils and opinion leaders before reaching a final decision.
He did, however, promise not to request the NT$49.9 billion additional budget for the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant -- but only because he said the annual budget earmarked for the project this year is sufficient.
The legislature has agreed to allocate a total of NT$123.8 billion for the project, but the Cabinet has only requested NT$107.9 billion so far.
Shen Chia-ling (沈嘉玲), executive secretary-general of the Hualien Dreamers' Union, said that the Cabinet should scrap the freeway altogether, especially after Mindulle.
"Overdevelopment in mountain and hillside areas, especially on the north and west coasts, has severely weakened our homeland," Shen said. "We're calling on the government to stop the construction of the freeway, which is bound to cause environmental havoc on the last clean soil on the island."
Also see story:
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS