Dozens of residents from Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) yesterday rallied outside the Taipei City Hall, demanding that the city government revoke what residents said was an illegal license it had issued for a project involving seven buildings on Danfeng Mountain (丹鳳山), while also expressing safety concerns.
The protesters shouted chants demanding that the project, which covers 9,664m2, be examined during environmental impact assessment (EIA) meetings and that its construction license be revoked.
They called for the amendment of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境評估法), which states that no assessment is required for construction projects occupying a space of less than 10,000m2.
Photo: Chen Yen-chun, Taipei Times
Citing a report that the group requested from the Taipei City Government Construction Management Office, Beitou Dan-Feng Association member Wan Yi-kai (王奕凱) said the city government was “blatantly lying” by issuing the construction permit to Ba Ba Business, also known as Hsin Ba Ba Corp.
The report showed that the overall incline of the construction site is 32.09 degrees, meaning that construction is prohibited at the site under the Regulations Governing Management of Construction on Slopes (山坡地建築管理辦法), which states that no construction should be carried out on slopes with an incline of more than 30 degrees.
Three out of the seven projects are based on level-four to level-five slopes, putting their inclines at between 30 and 55 degrees, he said.
Although the Construction Management Office cited the company, ordering two fines that amounted to NT$120,000, and ordered it to halt construction until it provides solutions to soil and water conservation problems, Wan said that the fines would hardly deter the project owner and that the office’s move has done little to improve the situation.
He said Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) should take responsibility for the license, which was issued during his mayoralty and is valid until 2016.
Taipei City Councilor Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) of the Democratic Progressive Party also called on Hau to provide a convincing explanation about the construction permit during next Thursday’s general municipal question-and-answer session.
Saying that Danfeng Mountain is blessed with a wide variety of precious natural landscapes and boasts a high level of biodiversity, the city councilor called for the establishment of a natural landscape park on the mountain.
However, she said she was angry to see city government agencies shifting responsibilities during an assessment meeting on this matter, held earlier this month and attended by officials from the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Geotechnical Engineering Office and the Department of Urban Development.
A resident surnamed Hou (侯) said that authorities should ensure transparency and allow members of the public to voice their opinions during the decisionmaking process, to prevent decisions that would harm citizens’ rights.
“The ways to poll public opinion should not be limited to casting ballots during elections. People should be given the opportunity to express their opinions before the government makes decisions,” she said.
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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