The Cabinet will convene a national conference on Taiwan's waste management policy so the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and anti-incinerator lobby can reach an agreement over the recent incinerator row.
At a public hearing held yesterday at the Legislative Yuan, lawmakers said they were very tired of communicating with the EPA, which stubbornly sticks to its incineration policy without considering social changes.
"The amount of waste is decreasing and the recycling rate is increasing. What the EPA needs now is the courage to face the situation," said DPP Legislator Eugene Jao (趙永清).
EPA Administrator Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said it was necessary to have at least one incinerator for each jurisdiction to avoid long-distance waste transportation.
Representatives of local authorities, however, said at the public hearing that if the EPA sticks to the idea, tax payers' money would be wasted.
Hsinchu County Councilor Lin Wei-chou (
"Hsinchu City has an incinerator with has a daily capacity of 900 tonnes. But now the EPA approves the NT$2.2 billion project to build another, which is located only 3km away in Hsinchu County," Lin said.
According to Lin, the amount of waste produced daily by the two jurisdictions is about 750 tonnes.
Taitung City Mayor Lai Kuen-cheng (賴坤成) argued that environmental pollution created by the incinerator would hamper the county from developing tourism.
An incinerator with a capacity of 300 tonnes per day is under construction in Taitung.
Yunling County Councilor Yin Lin-in (
"Building an incinerator at a site, where is just 1.8km from an area earmarked for the construction of a new water-treatment plant, is risking residents' lives," Yin said.
DPP Legislator Su Chih-fen (
The EPA estimated that the originally planned 36 incinerators would have been capable of burning 30,400 tonnes of waste per day by the end of next year.
Thirty-five earthquakes have exceeded 5.5 on the Richter scale so far this year, the most in 14 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said on Facebook on Thursday. A large earthquake in Hualien County on April 3 released five times as much the energy as the 921 Earthquake on Sept. 21, 1999, the agency said in its latest earthquake report for this year. Hualien County has had the most national earthquake alerts so far this year at 64, with Yilan County second with 23 and Changhua County third with nine, the agency said. The April 3 earthquake was what caused the increase in
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is unlikely to attempt an invasion of Taiwan during US president-elect Donald Trump’s time in office, Taiwanese and foreign academics said on Friday. Trump is set to begin his second term early next year. Xi’s ambition to establish China as a “true world power” has intensified over the years, but he would not initiate an invasion of Taiwan “in the near future,” as his top priority is to maintain the regime and his power, not unification, Tokyo Woman’s Christian University distinguished visiting professor and contemporary Chinese politics expert Akio Takahara said. Takahara made the comment at a
DEFENSE: This month’s shipment of 38 modern M1A2T tanks would begin to replace the US-made M60A3 and indigenous CM11 tanks, whose designs date to the 1980s The M1A2T tanks that Taiwan expects to take delivery of later this month are to spark a “qualitative leap” in the operational capabilities of the nation’s armored forces, a retired general told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) in an interview published yesterday. On Tuesday, the army in a statement said it anticipates receiving the first batch of 38 M1A2T Abrams main battle tanks from the US, out of 108 tanks ordered, in the coming weeks. The M1 Abrams main battle tank is a generation ahead of the Taiwanese army’s US-made M60A3 and indigenously developed CM11 tanks, which have
CASE COUNT: The deceased had advised law enforcement agencies regarding 60 fraud cases this year, leading to the confiscation of NT$9.3 billion in alleged illegal proceeds Prosecutors yesterday launched an investigation into the death of cryptocurrency expert Miffy Chen (陳梅慧), who died in a car crash on Wednesday under what some consider to be suspicious circumstances following her work with law enforcement to track down NT$9.3 billion (US$286.97 million) in alleged illegal proceeds. Prosecutor-General Hsing Tai-chao (邢泰釗) tasked the Hsinchu District Prosecutors’ Office with investigating the incident following requests from the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) and other agencies with which she worked to crack several prominent cases involving financial fraud and money laundering. Chen was killed in a six-car pileup near Hsinchu in the northbound lanes of Sun
RSS