Residents of Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) have launched a petition against Formosa San Jose Corp’s (聖州企業) establishment of an industrial complex in the township’s Longcyuan (龍泉) area.
Greater Longcyuan Region Anti-Industrial Zoning Self-Help Alliance president Chung Yi-hsin (鍾益新) said the group has collected more than 10,000 signatures, including from 462 academics, against the factory.
In addition to academics from 77 universities, researchers at the Academia Sinica, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Fisheries Administration, academics from Germany, Japan, as well as Saudi Arabia and the US have also signed, Chung said.
“We hope to show the government our determination to keep agricultural lands for agriculture,” he added.
National Pingtung University of Science and Technology College of Agriculture chancellor Wu Ming-chang (吳明昌) said the abuse of farmland for industrial development is the product of government policy, and that the government is responsible for addressing the problem.
“Real-estate speculation of Pingtung’s underutilized industrial properties has been rampant and is driving manufacturers to buy agricultural lands to avoid high property prices,” Wu said.
National Cheng Kung University Department of Taiwanese Literature chairperson Chung Hsiu-mei (鍾秀梅) said that the backlash against factories, such as CPC Corp, Taiwan’s naphtha cracker complexes in Kaohsiung and Yunlin County, showed that “people are disappointed by the promise of industrialization and resent pollution.”
National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium marine biologist Chiu Yu-wen (邱郁文) said the Longcyuan area is the source of groundwater that the county’s agriculture relies on, adding that the environmental impact report cited by Formosa San Jose was made using outdated metrics.
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