Environmental activists yesterday urged the central government to intervene following what they called the Taoyuan County Government’s failure to enforce a directive calling on a petrochemical company to submit a plan to restore algal reefs damaged by its construction of a temporary dock along the county’s coastline.
Taoyuan Local Union director-general Pan Chung-cheng (潘忠政) told a press conference in Taipei that part of the algal reefs close to Sinwu Township (新屋) was last month found to be damaged, allegedly by Oriental Petrochemical (Taiwan) Co. Pan said the company, a member of the Far Eastern Group, had excavated the reefs, destroying an area spanning 200m in length and more than 30m in width, to accommodate a 30m-by-80m temporary dock to store heavy machinery.
Citing a study conducted by National Taiwan University professor Dai Chang-feng (戴昌鳳), who used radiocarbon dating and found that the reefs were more than 7,000 years old, Pan said that the reefs, stretching 27km along the coastline, are ecologically invaluable and deserve to be listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
“The company set up the dock to cut transportation costs for the machinery, which are now transported by sea instead of by land,” Pan said.
The county government on Aug. 14 gave the firm one week to submit a plan to restore the reefs, but the company has ignored the county’s directive, he said.
The central government should step in to ensure that the county’s natural landscape is conserved, Pan and other environmental activists at the press conference said.
Citing Article 101 of the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法), which states that the Executive Yuan and relevant central government agencies must take action on behalf of municipal governments in cases in which the latter fail to perform their duties within a prescribed time, thus putting a cultural heritage at risk, Pan urged the Executive Yuan to establish a natural conservation zone in the area or list the reefs as natural commemoratives, so as to bar any future developments from taking place in the area.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (田秋堇), who was also at the press conference, called on Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) to stop Taoyuan County Commissioner John Wu (吳志揚) from allowing the company to continue with its “profiteering” acts.
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