Dozens of Changhua County residents gathered yesterday at the Construction and Planning Agency (CPA) to protest the government's plan to build a science park in the county's Erlin (二林) Township.
The project to build a Central Taiwan Science Park in Erlin recently passed the fourth phase of environmental inspection by the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) panel.
Once the project completes a final round of assessment at the CPA, construction will start in Erlin, located in central Taiwan between Yunlin County and the Jhuoshuei River (濁水溪), one of the few remaining coastal areas in western Taiwan that have not been affected by industrialization.
PHOTO: CNA
The protesters, mostly workers in the fishing and farming industries, shouted that the “government has forgotten the farmers and fishermen.”
One of the protesters, surnamed Lin (林), said the residents felt helpless because they knew the government would not listen to their needs and that construction could begin in two weeks' time.
Over the past few months, the plan to introduce industries like optoelectronics and semiconductors in the park has run into strong opposition from the Yunlin and Changhua county governments, local residents, environmentalists and some EIA panelists.
Opponents say plans to discharge treated wastewater from the park into Jhuoshuei River would contaminate nearby farmland.
They also said the proposal's huge water demands could exacerbate severe subsidence problems in Erlin, which is already sinking by 8.4cm per year, the worst rate of subsidence in the nation.
Environmental groups yesterday filed an appeal with the Executive Yuan, seeking to revoke the environmental impact assessment (EIA) conditionally approved in February for the Hsieh-ho Power Plant’s planned fourth liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving station off the coast of Keelung. The appeal was filed jointly by the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group, the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association and the Keelung City Taiwan Head Cultural Association, which together held a news conference outside the Executive Yuan in Taipei. Explaining the reasons for the appeal, Wang Hsing-chih (王醒之) of the Protect Waimushan Seashore Action Group said that the EIA failed to address
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
RSS