The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday halted the Shanyuan Palms Holiday Villas project in Taitung County over concerns about the proposed site, which is zoned as a coastal protection area.
The Coastal Zone Management Act (海岸管理法), passed in February, requires the central government and Taitung County Government to coordinate and outline coastal protection areas by Tuesday next week.
The project’s proposed site overlooks Shanyuan Beach in Dulan Bay (都蘭灣), which has a high probability of being zoned as a coastal protection area, meaning that other than public infrastructure and coastal management agencies, all other developments would be prohibited or restricted, a Ministry of the Interior representative said during an environmental impact assessment (EIA) meeting yesterday.
Photo: CNA
The site is likely to be classified as a “major scenic area,” meaning it would be in a class 1 protection zone, in which case the project would have to be terminated, a ministry representative said.
EPA Minister Wei Kuo-yen (魏國彥), who chaired the meeting, said that when a project is regulated by more than one law, the latest law should serve as the legal basis.
Wei said the act should be heeded, as it was introduced after the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法), but there are still uncertainties and insufficient data in the act.
Wei said that the EPA would ask the Tourism Bureau to consult with the ministry regarding how the project is to be zoned and that the EPA would resume the review after the matter is resolved.
The conclusions would serve as a reference for proposed developments in coastal areas, he said.
Prior to the meeting, scores of environmental campaigners and Aborigines from Taitung protested in front of the EPA building, urging the agency to halt the review process.
Citizen of the Earth office director Tsai Chung-yueh (蔡中岳) said that the project was passed in 2002, but project owner Tung Ho Development Co delayed construction.
“As such, the geological properties described in the original EIA report can no longer reflect the situation today,” he said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods