Environmental activists yesterday called Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsu Shu-po's (
"In 2004, underground water was used by 18 percent of the Taiwanese population. If there were problems with the water quality, I'm sure this fact would have been revealed by tests conducted by water companies," Taiwan Environmental Protection Union Convener Sam Lin (林聖崇) said at a press conference yesterday.
He said that according to Environmental Protection Administration investigations, the water supply in Yunlin complied 100 percent with safety regulations.
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Environmental groups called for the budget for the reservoir's construction to be frozen ,saying that it posed both geological and ecological dangers.
"Ever since the September 21 earthquake, there has been an accumulation of sand deposits. This will fall into the reservoir, polluting the water source. Look at what happened to Chaoling lake," said Taiwan Ecology Academy General Secretary Chen Bing-heng (
Chen added that the construction of a reservoir would disturb the habitat of a number of plant and bird species, including the Pitta brachyurs, a protected species.
Chen said that the interests of the residents of Yunlin were being sacrificed for industrial purposes, saying that only 200,000 to 240,000 tonnes of the proposed reservoir's daily supply of 690,000 tonnes of water would be going to the residents.
According to Chen, plans to build two more industrial sites in Yunlin are also in the offing.
The initial impact assessment for the construction of the Hushan reservoir was conducted before the Sept. 21, 1999 earthquake. Environmental groups are asking for a re-evaluation to be conducted, in view of geological concerns that have arisen since then.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching