Residents living close to Taipei Songshan Airport protested outside the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday, saying the government should compensate them as quickly as possible for tolerating noise caused by landing and departing aircraft.
The protesters, led by candidate for Taipei City councilor Chen Teh-sien (陳德賢) of the Taiwan Solidarity Union, were mainly from Datong (大同) and Zhongshan (中山) districts. They said the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) had promised it would compensate 100 households living in the designated noise control zone every year by installing soundproof facilities.
“There are about 100,000 households located in the noise control zone,” the protesters said in a statement. “However, 10 years have passed and only 5,092 households have been compensated.”
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
The protesters said decibel levels measured by the CAA at selected locations were much lower than those measured by the residents themselves. They said noise pollution would be much higher when direct flights between -Songshan and Tokyo’s Haneda airports are launched later this month.
“The noise from the airport has caused long-term damage to the residents’ health,” Chen said. “Taipei City’s Department of Environmental Protection is responsible for executing the installation of soundproof facilities and should not pass the buck. It obviously has colluded with the CAA by only recognizing the standards that the CAA set for giving out compensation.”
The EPA said it would soon organize a meeting which the CAA and residents could attend to talk about solutions.
“We will focus on two things. One will be the actions taken by the CAA to reduce the noise generated by aircraft landing and taking off and the other will be to see if there is any other way to make soundproof facilities available sooner,” said Hsieh Yein-rui (謝燕儒), director of the EPA’s Air Quality Protection and Noise Control Department.
Hsieh said compensation for noise control was funded by aircraft landing fees paid by the airlines using Taipei Songshan Airport. To facilitate the installation of soundproof facilities, the Department of Environmental Protection has divided the residents into three categories based on decibel measurements. Those living in the Category III area, which has a measured decibel of 75 or above, will be given priority, followed by those in the Category II and Category I areas respectively.
EPA statistics showed the CAA has yet to finish the installation of soundproof facilities in Category III areas.
“In the past, Songshan could collect aircraft landing fees of about NT$100 million [US$3.25 million] per year,” Hsieh said. “The launch of the high-speed rail service hurt domestic flight services badly, which in turn caused the landing charge to drop drastically to approximately NT$30 million per year.”
The CAA said the locations where noise levels were measured were determined by the CAA, the department as well as local residents and, therefore, cannot call the shots.
Statistics from the CAA showed that approximately NT$1.5 billion has been spent on noise control between 2000 and this year and NT$900 million was used for the installation of soundproof facilities.
A total of 5,165 households in the noise control zone are qualified for compensation for soundproof facilities. So far, 50 have yet to have them installed, the CAA said.
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