Government officials and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) committee members at the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday ripped into a gravel excavation policy assessment report submitted by the Bureau of Mines aimed at setting guidelines to regulate gravel mining operators, rejecting the document over what they said was outdated and insufficient data.
Responding to the premise of the report, which proposed gradually moving gravel mining from riverbeds to dry land, a representative from the Yilan County Government said that land-based gravel mining causes irreparable damage to soil and forests, has a huge impact on the ecosystem and pollutes air and water.
He called on the bureau to reconsider sourcing gravel on land, adding that if it must do so for the sake of national development, the plan should undergo a second-stage EIA, which would apply stiffer rules.
The representative from the Council of Agriculture asked bureau officials to explain why it had not included what environmental impact gravel excavation would have on eastern Taiwan and the outlying islands and said that it should provide detailed fauna and flora restoration plans.
A preliminary meeting on the development of gravel mining policy was held in 2006 and public hearings were held in 2010, prompting EIA committee member Lee Yu-ming (李育明) to question the delay of the report.
An official from the administration’s Department of Comprehensive planning said the bureau submitted the necessary data for yesterday’s assessment meeting earlier this year, adding that due to a misrepresentation of facts and difficulties it encountered gathering public opinion, the bureau had been improving the report’s content since 2010, which led to the delay.
However, committee members found that the public opinion the bureau said it had canvassed was missing from the report.
EIA committee members Lung Shiu-chun (龍世俊) said the policy guidelines espoused in the report were proposed in 2006 and therefore cannot reflect the present realities of Taiwan’s gravel mining, while Liu Hsiao-lan (劉小蘭) panned the bureau for using the overall supply of gravel in 2006 to represent the demand today.
Lung and Chen Tsun-hsien (陳尊賢) both said that the report should be rejected, so that the bureau can submit a revision.
In response, bureau Deputy Director-General Chen Yi-chen (陳逸偵) said gravel mining had been banned along many rivers — including the Tamsui (淡水河), Toucian (頭前溪) and Daan (大安溪) rivers — after Typhoon Morakot in 2009, resulting a shortage in gravel supply.
Commenting on the delay in submitting the report, he said that the bureau lacked the necessary funding to produce a solid report because the legislature in 2009 cut more than NT$1 million (US$31,771) from the budget it proposed to conduct research on the nation’s gravel mining sites.
He said the bureau only this year obtained the sum it had previously asked for.
Following an internal deliberation, the committee resolved that the report must be improved and reassessed in August next year.
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