Environmental activists yesterday called on the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and an environmental impact assessment (EIA) committee to reject a policy proposal seeking changes to drinking water source protection areas.
Taiwan Water Resources Protection Union (TWWPU) spokesperson Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) said the proposed policy was aimed at downsizing existing drinking water source quality protection areas and that would have big repercussions on drinking water quality if approved.
The designation of drinking water source quality protection areas by the EPA in 1998 was actually unnecessary, since the Ministry of Economic Affairs had already designated tap water quality and quantity protection areas in the 1970s, Chen said, adding that the areas designated by the EPA were smaller and already included in the tap water protection areas.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
TWWPU director Jennifer Nien (粘麗玉) said that for Gaoping River (高屏溪), for example, the drinking water source quality protection area is only 175,450 hectares, accounting for only 60 percent of the ministry-designated tap water protection area of 289,600 hectares.
The management of water quality in drinking water source areas is based on the EPA’s Type I Groundwater Pollution Control Standards, while the management of tap water quality and quantity protection areas is based on Type II standards, which are much looser, Nien said, “but the water body of the two areas are connected to each other and they should be regulated under the same standard, Type I.”
“We fear that if the policy proposal is approved at the EIA meeting, then local governments will follow the model and arbitrarily propose to downsize water quality protection areas.” Chen said.
“The safety of water resources in Taiwan is already at a critical point, so we can’t understand why the administration proposed this policy, which will have a negative impact on water resources and cultural heritage,” he said.
During the EIA meeting, several committee members and governmental officials also agreed that the existing drinking water sources should not be altered arbitrarily.
“On the designation, I think a stricter standard is better than a loose one,” said Liu Yi-chang (劉益昌), a committee member.
The committee decided that existing designated areas should not be abolished or changed. It also asked for additional information, including the evaluation of the environmental impact of “downsizing and abolition” of water protection areas.
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
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
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