Changhua County and Taichung City governments this week proposed a set of bylaws to regulate the burning of petroleum coke and coal to combat air pollution after a similar bid by Yunlin County was rejected by the central government.
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) last month invalidated a similar Yunlin County bylaw that would have prohibited the burning of petroleum coke and coal in the county by 2017, saying that such a ban would fall outside the jurisdiction of local governments according to the Energy Administration Act (能源管理法) and the Local Government Act (地方制度法).
Undeterred, the Changhua County Government proposed a draft bylaw to ban burning of coal, petroleum coke and coal water slurry countywide in two years, with the bylaw pending approval of the the Changhua County Council.
The Changhua Environmental Protection Bureau said the EPA’s rejection of the Yunlin ban was not necessarily applicable to other municipalities.
The PM2.5 — airborne pollutants measuring less than 2.5 micrometers — concentration level in Changhua last year was 31.2 micrograms per cubic meter, the fourth-highest in the nation and more than double the EPA’s national target of 15 micrograms per cubic meter by 2020.
Sixty percent of Changhua’s particulate matters are produced locally and the draft bylaw would sufficiently reduce air pollution, the bureau said.
Separately, a proposed Taichung bylaw that would prohibit the burning of petroleum coke and limit the burning of coal in the city passed its first reading at the Taichung City Council on Wednesday.
Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau Director Hung Cheng-chung (洪正中) said the bylaw is to reduce the use of coal by 40 percent in four years to protect residents’ health.
Taichung City Councilor Chen Shu-hua (陳淑華) said the Taichung bylaw, unlike the Yunlin ban, would not prohibit, but regulate the burning of coal, while Taiwan Power Co said it would be willing to abide by the regulations.
Taichung City Councilor Fan Sung-yu (范淞育) said the legislation would pressure coal-fired power plants in the city to commit to air pollution control, while blocking the draft bylaw would be a tacit approval of pollution.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
RISK FACTORS: ‘We hope people can cooperate and endure it ... it is possibly the very important last mile,’ Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations are to remain the same next month, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center reported 42,112 new local COVID-19 cases and 85 deaths, saying that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has dropped to a new low this month. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the center is keeping COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations the same due to the local virus situation, and an increase in the number of imported cases of the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, among other risk factors. Easing
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
RSS