Legislators yesterday accused the Environmental Protection Admini-stration (EPA) of wasting taxpayers' money, saying that at least NT$16 billion would be lost if the EPA's waste incinerator policy were to be carried out.
At a meeting convened by the Sanitation and Environment Committee and the Social Welfare Committee, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsu Chung-hsiung (徐中雄) said it was unnecessary to build more incinerators, because only 70 percent of the total capacity of the existing incinerators is being used. The EPA should promote regional cooperation on waste management, rather than building more incinerators, Hsu said.
EPA head Chang Juu-en (
"It's a reasonable revision, because we can't expect waste to just disappear. We have no choice but to manage it," Chang said.
At the meeting, the EPA's policy came under fire from legislators belonging to diverse political parties, including the Democratic Progressive Party's Eugene Jao (
The EPA has been refusing to cancel incinerator projects for years, claiming that contractors would have to be compensated for their losses, but a recent report of the Legislative Yuan's Sustainable Development Committee suggests that this would not really save taxpayers' money.
According to the report, the total cost of seven planned incinerators is about NT$27 billion, which includes the construction and operational costs for 20 years. If these projects were cancelled, the total financial loss would be about NT$10.8 billion, including NT$3.8 billion compensation to contractors and NT$7 billion operation fees for handling the waste for 20 years.
Legislators are planning to officially freeze the NT$3.04 billion budget proposed by the EPA for three months at a meeting on Wednesday. The budget is for the EPA to manage incinerator-related affairs next year.
Chang said that insufficient incinerator capacity would lead to overuse of landfills, which would increase the risk of groundwater contamination.
"Potential environmental risks can't be quantified in terms of money," Chang said.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
RSS