Environmental groups and local residents rallied in front of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) building in Taipei yesterday afternoon to protest an imminent review of a project to establish a new Shenao coal-fired power plant in New Taipei City.
The old power plant was decommissioned and torn down in 2007 due to its environmental impact on Fanzaiao Bay (番仔澳灣) and fishermen in the region.
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) last year suggested reestablishing the plant to satisfy electricity demands in northern Taiwan, with plans to install a 600,000 kilowatt coal-fired ultra-supercritical pressure boiler in Shenao Bay (深澳灣).
Photo: Yang Mien-chieh, Taipei Times
Reviewed three times since its proposal, the ultimate decision of whether to send back Taipower’s environmental impact statements due to changes made after the assessment, or approve the plant after modifications, was returned to the EPA’s environmental assessment committee, which started another review yesterday.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lee Yen-hsiu (李彥秀), who was one of the leaders of the protest, called for the EPA to send back the analysis, hold more public hearings so people could be informed about potential air pollution zones and the radius of impact in different seasons.
“There is no reason why the Democratic Progressive Party [DPP] government would want to build a new coal-fired power plant when the global consensus is for phasing out such plants,” Lee said.
KMT Legislator Lin Te-fu (林德福) said he could support the DPP’s plans to phase out nuclear power, but the lack of adequate power supplies due to loopholes in ancillary measures for such policies should not render the administration a lackey of the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
If the committee rushes the review, Lee said he would not rule out spearheading an event so residents of Taipei, New Taipei City and Keelung could protest.
If built, the new plant would affect air quality nationwide, not just in New Taipei City, Taipei and Keelung, KMT Legislator Chen Yi-min (陳宜民) said.
However, supporters of the project said that natural gas power generation was more dangerous than coal-fired power generation, adding that a new power plant would help boost and develop the local economy.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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