The Environmental Protection Administration’s (EPA) environmental impact assessment committee yesterday ruled that it will continue to review the third-phase expansion project at the Central Taiwan Science Park (中科園區).
However, the committee did not ask the developers — the National Science Council and the Central Science Park Administration — to halt construction on the controversial project.
The ruling went against the pleas of environmentalists, who had demanded that construction should stop immediately. They now say the ruling is likely to cause other developers to follow suit.
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
The EPA first approved the environment impact assessment of the project in 2006. Environmentalist and local residents then filed lawsuits, which went all the way to the Supreme Administrative Court, eventually leading to the EPA’s ruling being overturned.
The Supreme Administrative Court sided with the protesters and ruled that, because of the complexity of the issue and the potential health threat to local residents, the EPA should have conducted a second assessment before giving the companies the go-ahead to start construction.
However, the EPA did not ask for projects to be stopped immediately, saying that the developers should decide whether or not to halt construction.
Protestors and farmers near the science park have protested several times, calling on the EPA to enforce an immediate halt to all construction work at the park, citing irreversible pollution.
The protesters say the EPA has violated the court’s verdict and demanded EPA Minister Stephen Shen (沈世宏) resign.
Meanwhile, a survey from the EPA showed that both Kinmen and Matsu failed an evaluation last year on the quality of drinking water.
The EPA said it collected 11,127 samples of tap water nationwide last year, and 99.6 percent of them passed evaluation. The survey examined several items, including the amount of Escherichia coli and the turbidity of the water.
Kinmen, however, received the worst grade in the nation. Officials from the EPA sampled 186 cases from different reservoirs in Kinmen and found that 22 of them did not meet EPA standards. Four samples were taken from Shengli Reservoir (勝利水庫) in Matsu and two of them failed the evaluation.
The EPA said that the mishandling of water purification systems explained why certain samples failed the evaluation.
It also said that the water in Kinmen and Matsu is drawn from reservoirs that were built on the plains and that water in both places tends to contain a higher than average level of organic chemical substances because of ground pollution. This makes it difficult for the water purification system to filter out all the substances, the bureau said.
The EPA emphasized that construction to improve water quality in Kinmen and Matsu is scheduled to begin this year.
Among the water sampled in Taiwan proper, Taipei county received some of the worst evaluations. Samples that did not meet EPA standards came mostly from Sanxia (三峽), Sijhih (汐止) and Wanli (萬里).
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