The controversial construction of Miramar Resort Village at Taitung County’s Shanyuan Bay (杉原灣) gained conditional approval from a seventh Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) meeting yesterday, despite heated debate over the legitimacy of the project and the EIA meeting.
The joint build-operate-transfer project by the developer and the county government began construction in 2004.
The main building was built on a less than 1 hectare area by the beach, to avoid the EIA required for construction projects on land of more than 1 hectares.
Photo: Huang Chih-yuan, Taipei Times
The project later gained conditional approval from an EIA meeting at the local government for a total area of 6 hectares in 2008.
The project has sparked protests and lawsuits by environmentalists and local residents, and the Supreme Administrative Court in January made a final verdict ruling the project’s EIA conclusion invalid.
It reached another final verdict in September ordering the project to stop construction.
Photo: Huang Chih-yuan, Taipei Times
However, the Taitung County Government and the developer insisted the project was still legal and that it only needed to redo the EIA process and gain approval to proceed with its construction and operation plans.
Yesterday’s EIA meeting was held at the Taitung County Government, with hundreds of proponents and opponents of the project gathered outside the meeting venue.
Holding banners and calling on the protesters not to interfere with the meeting, local supporters and the Taitung Tourism Association shouted that the hotel would bring job opportunities.
Also holding up banners, people against the project questioned the legitimacy of redoing an EIA, saying it should be based on “precautionary principles” when the damage from the construction had already been done and that the EIA committee members were mostly from environmental engineering backgrounds, lacking expertise in the marine ecology, social and cultural aspects of the issue.
Meanwhile, more than 100 police were deployed outside the venue to prevent clashes between the different groups.
Police dragged several protesters along the ground or held them back with force to prevent them from entering the meeting.
The meeting convener — Taitung County Environmental Protection Bureau director Huang Ming-en (黃明恩) — led the committee members to another room for final discussions and refused to allow the media to enter the venue.
Following a closed-door meeting that lasted about half an hour, Huang announced that the project had been conditionally approved. Details of the conditions were not explained.
Shouting: “Illegal EIA meeting with invalid conclusion,” protesters said the EIA meeting yesterday was illegal and flawed and that as such, the meeting’s conclusion may be ruled invalid in court in the future.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS