Amid increasing criticism of its waste-management policy, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday it would review the necessity of building more incinerators.
The announcement comes a day after hundreds of anti-incinerator activists and residents at a construction site for a new incinerator in Linnei township (林內鄉), Yunlin County, clashed with police, injuring several officers.
They said that the incinerator, which would burn 600 tonnes of household waste a day, would be located just 1.8km from an area earmarked for the construction of a new water-treatment plant.
"Don't say that we did not hear what they said," said Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), the EPA administrator. "We plan to both review the waste-management policy and promote waste reduction."
Opposition to the EPA's burning-oriented waste policy has been increasing since September, when the Legislative Yuan first reviewed the agency's budget for next year.
Yesterday, representatives of 122 anti-incinerator groups held a press conference at the Legislative Yuan with lawmakers, accusing the EPA of wasting taxpayers' money to build unnecessary incinerators.
"Burning-oriented waste management policies result in a low recycling rate of 14.5 percent," said Chen Jian-zhi (陳建志), director of the waste policy committee of the Green Citizens' Action Alliance.
Activists also charge that inappropriate operation of incinerators creates not only air pollution but also toxic dioxin.
In response, Hau said the agency would develop sounder policies to promote recycling and the reduction of garbage within six months.
The EPA will also review projects to build new incinerators to see it there are alternatives.
According to Chen Lien-ping (陳聯平), director-general of the EPA's Bureau of Incinerator Engineering, new-incinerator projects in seven areas would be reviewed.
The seven incinerators, with a combined capacity of 3,350 tonnes, were planned for Yunlin County, Hsinchu City, Miaoli County, Taichung City, Nantou County, Hualien County and Taipei County, Chen said.
Hau, however, stressed that the ideal situation was for each jurisdiction to have at least one incinerator to avoid having to transport waste over long distances.
More than a dozen assistants to lawmakers of the legislature's Committee for Sanitation, Environment and Social Welfare released a press release yesterday to point out what they said was a contradiction in the EPA's announcement.
Of the seven planned incinerators, only two, in Taipei County and Taichung City, would be located in jurisdictions that already have an incinerator.
"If the EPA insists on building at least one incinerator in each jurisdiction, then the review will only affect two out of the seven," said a DPP lawmaker's assistant who declined to be identified.
Earlier this month, lawmakers approved only a small part of the EPA's budget for next year because of severe disagreements over its waste management policies.
The remaining NT$7.56 billion, which includes NT$3.27 billion for building new incinerators, will be reviewed again by the 12 standing committees today.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS