The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday conditionally passed the environment impact assessment (EIA) for Tainan County's Tree Valley Park (樹谷園區), a 247 hectare TFT-LCD industrial park that could potentially create at least 10,000 jobs and NT$300 billion (US$9.3 billion) in revenue.
The plan was rejected by the last environmental impact committee on grounds that it competed with agricultural water supplies and posed air pollution and flooding threats.
The park, located west of the Southern Taiwan Science Park (
In 2004 the plan received approval from its EIA to host downstream display manufacturers.
"However, since many downstream corporations moved to China, the design of the park was modified to host middle-and upper-stream corporations such as polarizers, glass substrates and TFT-LCD manufacturers," said Edward Huang (
Tainan County Commissioner Su Huan-chih (
"The EIA was passed on several conditions to ensure the rights of local farmers as well as the health of nearby residents," Huang said.
The conditions included agreements to minimally affect the agricultural water supply, to reduce productivity when the air pollution index exceeds EPA standards, to evaluate health risks for nearby residents and to establish a supervision committee that monitors Tree Valley's compliance to the above EPA regulations.
In response, Taiwan Environmental Protection Union Chairwoman Gloria Hsu (
"Look at [Formosa Plastic's] Sixth Naphtha Cracker Plant," she said. "In the proposal they said the water usage would be 257,000 tonnes daily, but after the construction they upped the number to 350,000, and the EPA still gave them the green light."
"History may repeat itself with Tree Valley," she said.
"Su is a law professional, but he is leading the [Tainan] Government in breaking the law," she said, citing the committee's original veto to Tree Valley partially "because Chimei started the park's construction before the EIA was passed."
"We also voted against it because the air pollution capacity in the area had already reached saturation with the Southern Taiwan Science Park, and because the construction would increase flooding risks to nearby neighborhoods," she said.
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