The first public hearing on an amendment to the nation’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) regulations broke up yesterday, after an official stormed out citing wrongful accusations by environmentalists.
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) originally scheduled public hearings for 9:30am and 2pm to discuss an amendment to 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).
Before the start of the first hearing, environmental advocates gathered outside the EPA building to raise concerns about items on the bill.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Taiwan Water Resources Protection Union director Jennifer Nien (粘麗玉) said the draft might lead to an easing of regulations governing urban development.
It might unduly expedite the development of projects by Formosa Petrochemical Corp, CPC Corp, Taiwan and other large companies, she said.
The public hearing got under way, hosted by EPA Deputy Minister Thomas Shun-Kuei Chan (詹順貴), who was an environmental lawyer before taking office.
Chan said he understood the concerns of environmentalists, adding that he expected them to engage in deeper discussion.
“We welcome different opinions, but disagree with allegations that we are benefiting corporations,” he said.
Nien said that she was not accusing the EPA of benefiting corporations.
Another advocate protested that the conference room was too crowded and called on Chan to allow more people to sit around the table.
Unhappy that his remarks kept being interrupted by meeting participants, Chan canceled the meeting and stormed out of the room.
He added that he would resign his position if he has ever acted in ways that benefited developers.
“Chan used to work with us before he took office,” Green Consumers’ Foundation chairman Jay Fang (方儉) said, adding that the draft would have an immense negative impact.
“Chan could not calmly address the amendment. The EPA should not allow him to host any more meetings,” Fang said.
Other groups called for collaboration.
Environmental Jurists Association Secretary-General Echo Lin (林仁惠) urged both sides to continue the meeting and discuss the amendment.
Misunderstandings about the amendment could be worked out, Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association Secretary-General Lin Tzu-ling (林子凌) said.
About half an hour later, Chan returned to the meeting room with EPA Minister Lee Ying-yuan (李應元).
Lee said that he understood the participants’ concerns, but hoped that attendees could respect procedures.
A larger room would be used for the next public hearing on Friday, he said.
In related news, the EPA announced that it would begin the selection process for EIA committee members, as the two-year tenure of the 14 current members ends on July 31.
The EIA is planning to livestream review meetings beginning in August, Department of Comprehensive Planning Director-General Liu Tsung-yung (劉宗勇) said.
Senior judges yesterday met to discuss the constitutionality of a law that makes adultery a criminal offense, before being ordered by Judicial Yuan President Hsu Tzong-li (許宗力) to set a date for a constitutional interpretation within the next month. The judges met to discuss Article 239 of the Criminal Code on offenses against marriage and family, after 18 judges had called for a constitutional interpretation of the issue. Taipei District Court Judge Lin Meng-huang (林孟皇) said that while he had previously tried adultery cases and never questioned the law, his feelings changed when trying a case last year involving baseball star Wang
Instead of hating the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), help change it, KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said, as he urged young people to join efforts to reform the party. As the nation marked Youth Day on Sunday, Chiang said in a Facebook post that he wanted to remind people that “the KMT used to be very young.” Now, when people think of the KMT, they equate it with older people, he wrote. “Even if [the KMT] is a 100-year-old party, it must maintain a young mentality, and understand what young people want and what they want the KMT to do,” Chiang wrote.
TOO TIRED: Investigators found that the pilot’s lack of alertness could be attributed to a lack of sleep the previous night, when he had slept with his child It was a copilot’s inappropriate operation of the aircraft and the pilot’s insufficient alertness that led to a hard landing of a China Airlines cargo flight on Dec. 13, 2018, the Taiwan Transportation Safety Board said yesterday. Flight CI6844, a Boeing 747-409 which departed from Hong Kong International Airport, landed on the pre-threshold area of runway L5 at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, about 21m before the head of the runway, an investigation report said. The hard landing damaged three runway lights, but none of the personnel on board sustained any injuries, the report said. When approaching the runway, the copilot failed to maintain
DISTRUST WARRANTED? The WHO is under China’s control and has become a useless organization, while data from China cannot be trusted, a Control Yuan member said China’s demand that the novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, Hubei Province, not be referred to with names like the “Wuhan pneumonia” betrays its lack of confidence in itself, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) told lawmakers yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘) asked Su, during a interpellation at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, for his view on China’s attempts to redeem its national image in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These included China’s efforts to “bleach” its image, including having WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus publicly praise its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, and thanking it for buying time
RSS