The controversial Suhua Highway improvement project won conditional, though unanimous, approval yesterday from the Environmental Protection Administration’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) committee.
It is the first time an EIA committee has unanimously backed any impact statement after just a month of review.
The decision could bring to a close an issue that has plagued President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) since he took office in 2008.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
Environmental activists called the ruling rash, a characterization Minister of Transportation and Communications Mao Chi-kuo (毛治國) said was unfair.
“We have spent a year communicating with environmental groups, local residents and members of the EIA committee,” Mao said. “We held ‘warm-up exercises’ for a year and eventually found a solution that the majority appear to agree on.”
The plan was aimed at striking a balance between protecting the environment and upholding social justice, he said.
The principle has always been to “provide residents of Hualien a safe way home,” Mao said, which entails a significant departure from the Suhua Freeway project that was abandoned last December.
Mao said his ministry had come up with solutions for several problems that could arise from the improvement project, such as limiting the number of gravel trucks on the highway. China Steel (中鋼) has agreed to transport its material by train instead, he said.
While activists requested that additional geological information be gathered on some sections along the highways to ensure construction safety, Mao said the ministry had collected enough information from other construction projects on the highway as well as from the old and current North-Link railway line.
However, additional geological assessments would be carried out before construction begins on each section of the project, he said.
The conditional approval came as no surprise, since the project won approval earlier this month from a number of EIA committee members during the preliminary review. The EIA General Assembly meeting yesterday, which was attended by 17 members, lasted about six hours before a resolution was reached.
Activists opposed to the project and Hualien residents engaged in a heated debate outside the building during the committee meeting. Some of the environmentalists accused Hualien County Commissioner Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁) of pressuring the committee members to approve the project.
The committee set several key conditions for the project to proceed, including a requirement that the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) turn the Dongao (東澳) and Jhongren (中仁) tunnels along the highway into double-corridor tunnels.
The ministry will also have to establish standards to regulate the suspension and resumption of construction work if several conditions occur: If the project results in the loss of more than 2,100 liters of water per minute over a period of 24 hours, if it threatens the existence of species in the area, if it worsens air quality or if it generates noise pollution.
In addition, the ministry must also identify water veins along the route and explain what it will do to preserve water resources.
Mao said the ministry would quickly complete the necessary procedures so bidding information could be put online for contractors by the end of this year.
Construction could start before the Lunar New Year holiday, he said. The holiday falls in early February next year.
The project will create new routes at three different sections on the Suhua Highway: between Suao (蘇澳) and Dongao and between Nanao (南澳) and Heping (和平) in Yilan County and Hejhong (和中) and Dacingshuei (大清水) in Hualien County.
The three new routes will cover a total area of about 38km.
The entire upgrade is scheduled to be complete by 2017 however, the ministry plans to have the section between Suao and Dongao open to traffic in 2016, officials said.
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