A civilian Pentagon official on Wednesday ordered the US Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a full environmental assessment of a US$9.4 billion Formosa Plastics Corp (台塑) complex planned in Louisiana, drawing praise from environmentalists.
US Army Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Works Jaime Pinkham ordered the review after a virtual meeting with opponents of a corps wetlands permit that allowed Formosa Plastics Group (台塑集團) member FG LA LLC to build 10 chemical plants and four other major facilities on the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Critics praised the decision.
“The Army Corps has finally heard our pleas and understands our pain. With God’s help, Formosa Plastics will soon pull out of our community,” said a statement by Sharon Lavigne, who founded the local group Rise St James to fight the planned complex announced in 2018.
Photo: AP
Formosa, based in Taiwan, wants to produce polyethylene, polypropylene, polymer and ethylene glycol on 970 hectares in St James Parish. Dubbed “The Sunshine Project” because it is near the Sunshine Bridge, the project is expected to provide 1,200 permanent jobs and up to 8,000 construction jobs, the state has said.
Formosa yesterday said the company would re-evaluate the investment and expects a result by the end of the year.
The environmental assessment would certainly delay the progress of the factory construction, Formosa said.
The corps issued a permit in September 2019 to let FG LA dredge and fill wetlands, and create detention ponds in wetlands, a lawsuit by opponents said.
It said the site includes more than 364 hectares of wetlands, of which nearly 25 hectares of wetlands and nearly 20 hectares of other waters would be permanently affected.
It could take years to put together a full environmental impact statement, Lavigne said in an interview.
She said she silently thanked God when Pinkham said he was planning the order.
“I had to touch myself to see if I’m real,” said Lavigne, who earlier this year was awarded a Goldman Environmental Prize honoring grassroots environmental activism.
Within an hour, Pinkham’s memo to the corps’ commanding general was posted on his office’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, she said.
Pinkham, who supervises and sets policy for the corps’ civil works, wrote that he is committed to having the army “be a leader in the federal government’s efforts to ensure thorough environmental analysis and meaningful community outreach.”
The corps needs “to thoroughly review areas of concern, particularly those with environmental justice implications,” Pinkham wrote.
Major construction has been on hold since the corps agreed in November last year to reconsider its permit for the plants in Welcome, where the US Bureau of Census estimates nearly 97 percent of the 880 residents are black.
NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT: An official said that Guan Guan’s comments had gone beyond the threshold of free speech, as she advocated for the destruction of the ROC China-born media influencer Guan Guan’s (關關) residency permit has been revoked for repeatedly posting pro-China content that threatens national security, the National Immigration Agency said yesterday. Guan Guan has said many controversial things in her videos posted to Douyin (抖音), including “the red flag will soon be painted all over Taiwan” and “Taiwan is an inseparable part of China,” while expressing hope for expedited “reunification.” The agency received multiple reports alleging that Guan Guan had advocated for armed reunification last year. After investigating, the agency last month issued a notice requiring her to appear and account for her actions. Guan Guan appeared as required,
A strong cold air mass is expected to arrive tonight, bringing a change in weather and a drop in temperature, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The coldest time would be early on Thursday morning, with temperatures in some areas dipping as low as 8°C, it said. Daytime highs yesterday were 22°C to 24°C in northern and eastern Taiwan, and about 25°C to 28°C in the central and southern regions, it said. However, nighttime lows would dip to about 15°C to 16°C in central and northern Taiwan as well as the northeast, and 17°C to 19°C elsewhere, it said. Tropical Storm Nokaen, currently
‘NATO-PLUS’: ‘Our strategic partners in the Indo-Pacific are facing increasing aggression by the Chinese Communist Party,’ US Representative Rob Wittman said The US House of Representatives on Monday released its version of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, which includes US$1.15 billion to support security cooperation with Taiwan. The omnibus act, covering US$1.2 trillion of spending, allocates US$1 billion for the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative, as well as US$150 million for the replacement of defense articles and reimbursement of defense services provided to Taiwan. The fund allocations were based on the US National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2026 that was passed by the US Congress last month and authorized up to US$1 billion to the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency in support of the
PAPERS, PLEASE: The gang exploited the high value of the passports, selling them at inflated prices to Chinese buyers, who would treat them as ‘invisibility cloaks’ The Yilan District Court has handed four members of a syndicate prison terms ranging from one year and two months to two years and two months for their involvement in a scheme to purchase Taiwanese passports and resell them abroad at a massive markup. A Chinese human smuggling syndicate purchased Taiwanese passports through local criminal networks, exploiting the passports’ visa-free travel privileges to turn a profit of more than 20 times the original price, the court said. Such criminal organizations enable people to impersonate Taiwanese when entering and exiting Taiwan and other countries, undermining social order and the credibility of the nation’s
RSS