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
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS