The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday rebutted accusations that it was trying to get Taiwan Power Co (台電) off the hook in the latter’s legal battle with the Taipei County Environmental Protection Bureau.
The Taipei County Government and Taipower have been at loggerheads since 2006, when the county government began issuing fines to the company on the grounds that the first and second nuclear power plants were in violation of their environmental impact assessments. Taipower filed an appeal for each fine with the administrative appeals commission.
Last November, the EPA declared the fines, which by then had reached NT$2.3 billion (US$75.9 million), invalid.
When Taipei County became a “quasi-special municipality” last year, however, the county bureau continued to issue daily fines of NT$6 million to the two plants for violating the law governing impact assessments. The bureau said the plants were not storing nuclear waste as indicated in their assessments and said the violations justified the fines.
Taipower’s fines had accumulated to NT$852 million as of Thursday.
On Wednesday, the appeals commission issued its first ruling in favor of Taipower, overturning the four previous rulings on the fines.
Sources said the four fines only amounted to NT$1.2 million, but since they were the first fines issued, the decision would likely have significant bearing on the outcome of Taipower’s subsequent appeals.
The appeals commission had planned to issue its decision on April 23, after its written decision had been prepared, but after learning on Thursday that the EPA was submitting an amendment to the Environmental Assessment Impact Enforcement Rules (環境影響評估法施行細則) to the Cabinet that would abolish the review and supervisory powers of county governments, the commission decided to issue its ruling. The decision was sent to Taipower yesterday.
At a hastily arranged press conference yesterday, the EPA rebutted speculation that it wanted to “get Taipower off the hook.”
“The law amendment has been underway for almost a year and has nothing to do with the hand-over of power,” said Edward Huang (黃光輝), director-general of the EPA’s comprehensive planning department.
“[The administration] strongly objects to such speculation,” he said.
“Such [negative] comments [when a local government conflicts with the central government] are not only unhelpful to the environmental impact review system, but also send a bad message to the public,” Huang said.
The environmental assessment law had been under review at the Cabinet “because current regulations are ambiguous concerning which governmental agencies hold authority over which public structures,” Huang said.
“The law should be amended so that a case will not be reviewed both by a local government and the central government, resulting in possible conflicts — we are not just targeting Taipei County, we are doing this for all 25 cities and counties nationwide,” he said.
Additonal reporting by Meggie Lu
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