Residents of Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) said the area is beset with questionable construction and expansion projects, expressing anger and concern over personal safety, as well as damage the construction could cause the district’s mountain areas.
Wang Yi-kai (王奕凱) said he found last week that a once-forested stretch of Danfeng Mountain (丹鳳山) had been reduced to a barren slope, with a construction project already under way.
The project is being conducted on a steep slope and poses great danger to residents’ safety with increased chance of rockfalls and landslides, not to mention it is typhoon season and there are residents living just meters downhill, he said.
Photo courtesy of a group self-termed "Chi-Yen First Party"
Ba Ba Business, which owns a plot of land on the mountain’s slopes, is the project owner, Wang said, adding that the Taipei City Government years ago approved a request to change the slope’s land use from a protected forest area to a construction site.
“Residents have been protecting this area from any development for decades, and both [former president] Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and [President] Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) during their terms as mayor imposed restrictions on any construction taking place on the site,” Wang said.
“However, the company staged a ‘raid’ by forcibly starting construction while their negotiations with residents and Qiyan Borough (奇岩) are still ongoing,” he said, adding that the company should provide government-issued licenses to prove it had gained approval to start construction.
Chi-Yen Community Association secretary-executive Wu Hui-yu (吳慧瑜) said the Ba Ba site is one of seven projects that are scheduled to take place on the slope.
“These projects should be attributed to the land use changes that allowed protected forest areas to become residential areas,” Wu said. “With the many buildings already erected on both sides of Qiyan Road, the new construction will cause traffic problems and hamper rescue missions in the event of a disaster.”
She called on relevant agencies to carry out an appraisal of the area to determine whether it can accommodate the projects, and asked them whether they had gained residents’ consent before they issued any licenses to the project owners.
Meanwhile, Wego Elementary School has proposed an expansion project to build facilities within a protected water catchment area on a slope.
Beitou Fountain Self-help group member Wu Mei-hui (吳美慧) said that a part of the proposed expansion site is based upon a natural fountain and that it would endanger the habitat of a range of protected bird and frog species.
Part of the site also overlaps with a residential area close to Taipei Municipal Yi-Fang Elementary School, she said.
The project proposes to make the meandering Cuiyun Street its main thoroughfare, which would increase congestion on the already crowded street with dozens of school buses heading to and setting out from the school, putting residents’ safety at risk, Wu Mei-hui said.
“The most ridiculous part about this plan is that Wego Elementary School hopes to acquire 99 percent of its proposed expansion site from state-owned land, while only possessing 1 percent of the 1.62 hectare space it asked for,” she said.
The project is pending a land use change approval as the school work out plans to acquire the site from the city government.
The commission last month said it would conduct an on-site assessment before it gives the expansion proposal any further deliberation.
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