Members of environmental protection and medical groups yesterday said the Formosa Plastics Group’s (台塑) naphtha cracker in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮) has emitted excessive amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and should therefore be banned from further expansion.
Taiwan Water Resources Protection Union and the Changhua Medical Alliance for Public Affairs made the remarks at a press conference co-hosted by Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers Liu Chien-kuo (劉建國) and Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇), urging the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) not to proceed with a vote-by-mail decision process on a re-evaluation of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the naphtha cracker’s expansion project.
The groups said the EIA meeting on Sept. 7 discussed the re-evaluation of the plant’s air pollution control. Data provided by the Yunlin County Government on the plant’s VOC emission level was seriously underestimated, adding that the level reported was an estimate, not an actual measured value.
Photo: Chien Jung-feng, Taipei Times
The estimated value of 4,341 tonnes per year calculated this month has already surpassed the permitted limit of 4,302 tonnes per year, based on the original EIA report conclusion, said Wu Li-hui (吳麗慧), a member of the alliance, urging the EIA meeting to verify the actual emission values and to reject the proposed expansion.
Yunlin Environmental Protection Union board member Lin Hui-mei cited an epidemiological survey report conducted by Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權), a professor at National Taiwan University’s Institute of Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene, which showed that air pollutants emitted by the plant may have negative effects on the liver, lung, kidney, blood and immune system of residents.
Due to a filibuster staged by members of civic environmental groups who opposed the proposal, the Sept. 7 meeting ended without a conclusion on the case.
The EPA later said if the EIA meetings are interrupted again and end without a conclusion, it would consider allowing committee members to vote by mail.
In response, Thomas Chan (詹順貴), an attorney who has worked closely with environmental groups, alleged the vote-by-mail method was illegal, arguing that conclusions drawn by an EIA meeting should be based on a council system and that the committee members should be allowed to discuss the case thoroughly before making any decisions.
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:
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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