Civic groups and residents from Pingtung County and Greater Kaohsiung yesterday held a protest in front of the Environmental Protection Administration just as officials were about to hold an environmental impact assessment meeting on construction of the “Gaoping Great Lakes” (高屏大湖) as part of a water diversion project in the south.
The protesters said the 697 hectare artificial lakes, planned by the Water Resources Agency’s Southern Region Water Resources Office, would greatly affect the water supply for shrimp farming, agriculture and household use.
The Gaoping Great Lakes project, located at the border of Pingtung County’s Ligang Township (里港) and Greater Kaohsiung’s Meinong District (美濃), was initially known as the Jiyang artificial lake project, an alternative plan to the Zengwun River (曾文溪) Cross-Border Channeling project that passed an assessment in 2002.
Photo: Tsai Wen-chu, Taipei Times
However, the Jiyang artificial lake project faced strong opposition from local residents and environmentalists throughout the decade, with construction budgets having been cut many times by the legislature over the years.
The now-renamed project was bundled with a project to ensure stable water supply in the area, with planned construction costing an estimated NT$16.1 billion (US$545.5 million).
Representatives from more than 35 civic groups opposing the project said it would turn farmland about 27 times the size of Da-an Forest Park in Taipei into artificial lakes 12m deep, and 3m-to-5m dikes would obstruct the groundwater and rainwater for irrigation in the area, causing even more serious flood problems.
“It doesn’t make sense to sacrifice the lives of us local residents and pump water from the area where we live to supply water to other areas,” said You Chi-ching (尤啟精), warden of Ligang’s Jhonghe Village (中和).
Taiwan Solidarity Union Legislator Lin Shih-chia (林世嘉) said the dikes risked blocking rainwater infiltration and causing floods in Greater Kaohsiung’s Meinong and Cishan districts (旗山), as well as Ligang Township, during the rainy season.
The tapwater leakage rate in Greater Kaoshiung was about 24 percent, the protesters said, urging the agency to spend money on improving the water-channeling leakage problem in the area instead of spending billions of dollars to build the artificial lakes.
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
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying
RSS