The government’s plan to overhaul environmental impact assessment (EIA) rules was pre-empted by environmental lawyers who published a draft amendment at a forum in Taipei yesterday, calling for higher fines and stricter criteria.
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) on May 2 said it would amend the Environmental Impact Assessment Enforcement Rules (環境影響評估法施行細則) and the Standards for Determining Specific Items and Scope of Environmental Impact Assessments for Development Activities (開發行為應實施環境影響評估細目及範圍認定標準).
The EPA will publish its final draft by the end of this month, Department of Comprehensive Planning Director-General Liu Tsung-yung (劉宗勇) told the forum.
The forum was organized by the Environmental Jurists Association and National Taiwan University’s (NTU) Policy and Law Center for Environmental Sustainability.
Association director Chang Yu-yin (張譽尹) presented the environmentalists’ draft amendment, saying its aim is to establish criteria to nullify outdated EIAs.
Authorities should request developers to apply for new EIAs if changes to environmental conditions occur, he said.
The draft proposes increasing fines by a factor of 10, with the maximum fine reaching NT$15 million (US$497,892).
William Lin (林群超), a former environmental engineering specialist speaking from the audience, said politicians should also face fines if they make wrong decisions related to development plans.
“Was the recent Suhua Highway landslide caused by poor evaluations of environmental conditions?” he asked.
Experts attending yesterday’s forum said they want to see the implementation of clearer criteria to hold decisionmaking authorities accountable, though opinions differed on whether EIA committee members’ veto should be abolished.
“Accumulated impacts” should be taken into account in the government’s strategic environmental assessment, especially amid plans to build more wind farms, NTU Risk Society and Policy Research Center Assistant Researcher Lin Mu-xing (林木興) said.
The Bureau of Energy in 2015 announced that developers of offshore wind farms would be required to pass EIAs by the end of this year to gain development approval.
Asked whether the deadline is reasonable, Lin Mu-xing said the key is to establish more precise, predictable and consistent assessment criteria.
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