Former Yunlin County commissioner Su Chih-fen (蘇治芬) came under fire from environmentalists after it was alleged that he issued operating licenses to several naphtha cracker plants in the county’s Mailiao Township (麥寮) prior to an environmental review.
Environmentalists have called for prosecutors to investigate.
Taiwan Water Resources Protection Union spokesperson Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) said that a methyl methacrylate (MMA) plant belonging to the Formosa Plastics Group, during an expansion project in 2009, applied for permits to process 12,450 tonnes of acetone, 52,560 tonnes of cyanic acid and 64,970 tonnes of methanol every year.
Although the application had not passed an environmental review, in 2010 the county government issued the necessary licenses to process said materials, while Su was still in office.
Fight for Health Women’s Group executive director Yen Shu-nu (顏淑女) said the county government last year gave the MMA plant permits for producing products and processing substances not listed on the plant’s application, including ethylenediamine, ammonium sulfate, fuming sulfuric acid and heavy crude oil, in addition to permits for 17 new storage tanks and new manufacturing processes.
The county government violated the law by prematurely issuing the licenses, Yen said, calling for prosecutors to launch an investigation into the suspected violation to see whether Su had received kickbacks from the Formosa Plastics Group and whether there are other similar violations by the county government.
The Formosa Plastics Group said the environmental review is a preliminary assessment conducted prior to a development project in accordance with the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法), whereas every modification during the operation of a plant requires the operator to file a modification application according to the Air Pollution Control Act (空氣污染防制法), which would not necessarily require further environmental review.
The county government renewed the licenses — first approved in 2004 — based on the Air Pollution Control Act, while the environmentalists made a false allegation, because they have confused the two acts, the company said.
However, the environmental impact assessment review committee said that differences between the Formosa Plastics Group’s report on Wednesday and the documents submitted prior to the review were too large to be resolved, so the review would be discontinued until the company resubmits correct documents and details of its products and pollution volume.
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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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching