Residents fume over incinerator waste plan

Hundreds residents of Hsintien, Taipei County, urged the government yesterday to block construction of a landfill for hazardous waste near their home.

The controversial landfill project, the first such project to receive financial assistance from the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) for treating hazardous residue from incinerators, has upset some of the 130,000 residents of Hsintien's Ankeng area. Residents have had to live with a waste incinerator with a 900-tonne-a-day capacity since 1994.

More 500 residents of Ankeng attended a public hearing at the Legislative Yuan yesterday morning and accused the Taipei City Government of being careless in passing the environmental impact assessment for the project in 2001.

Residents the Te-an borough, where the incinerator is located, said building a huge landfill nearby was unacceptable.

"Is it fair to us?" Te-an borough chief Ting Wan-li (丁萬里) said at the hearing.

The project calls for making a 50-hectare mountainous area home to 9 million tonnes of industrial waste, including toxic bottom ash and fly ash from incinerators.

Construction scheduled to begin last week. Strong local opposition, however, has delayed the project.

DPP Eugene Jao (趙永清), who chaired the hearing, said the impact assessment was flawed.

According to materials Jao requested from the local government, some experts suggested that a stricter impact assessment was necessary because the project was too complicated to be reviewed all at once.

Jao's suggest the reason the local government refused to act on the experts' advice was the urgency of treating "non-hazardous" industrial waste.

A low-ranking official representing the Taipei County Government at the hearing said the impact assessment had been processed according to the law.

But Lin Shu-huei (林淑慧), a conservationist, said the impact assessment mentioned nothing about dozens of endangered species in the area.

Some said landfill construction will harm a nearby garden, home to more than 200 kinds of butterflies, dozens of dragonflies, endangered frogs and rare insects.

Experts academic circles said at the meeting that Ankeng residents' anger was triggered by the government, which promotes development thoughtlessly without communicating with locals.

"After all, any citizen has the right to question an environmental problem threatening daily life," said Lin Yih-ren (林益仁), assistant professor of social transformation studies at Shih Hsin University.

Lin the government should not force the public to accept a project supported by an impact assessment riddled with unsolved problems.

Lee Yung-jaan (李永展), professor of Chinese Culture University's Department of Architecture and Urban Design, said a more stringent assessment was needed because "the slope of the mountainous area was too steep to be developed."

DPP Chou Ya-shu (周雅淑) said the Taipei County Government should demand a new impact assessment.

"Existing problems surrounding the project are easily seen by residents and anyone outside of the government," Chou said.

With the support of Taipei County Council members and legislators, Ankeng residents plan to protest in front of Taipei City Government next month to urge Taipei County Commissioner Su Chen-chang (蘇貞昌) to halt the landfill project.