Accompanied by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wu Yi-chen (吳宜臻), Miaoli County residents yesterday urged the Water Resources Agency (WRA) to abort its planned construction of the Tianhuahu Reservoir (天花湖水庫) on the border of Miaoli’s Touwu (頭屋) and Gongguan (公館) townships.
Construction plans for the reservoir were initiated more than a decade ago, and while local residents have opposed the project for several years — gathering a petition with more than 10,000 signatures in 2010 — the plan gained conditional approval at an environmental impact assessment meeting earlier this month.
Wu said residents are concerned that the cross-watershed diversion engineering project could lead to possible mudslides, such as the one in Greater Kaohsiung’s Siaolin Village (小林), which was buried by a massive mudslide when Typhoon Morakot struck the area in 2009 and which it was said to have been caused by the Tsengwen Reservoir (曾文水庫) project.
“The cross-watershed diversion causes the water vein in the mountain to become dried and cracked, and if there is sudden and heavy rain during the dry season it could lead to a massive landslide,” convener of the Southern Waters Alliance Lu Tai-ying (魯台營) said.
The planned reservoir is also located on a faultline, so it may also threaten lives in the two nearby townships, Lu said.
There are already five reservoirs in the county that provide enough water for the nearby townships, Gongguan Township Elected Representatives member Chou Feng-chia (周逢甲) said, adding that the residents are also concerned about the project diverting water from the Houlong River (後龍溪) and adversely affecting the environment or causing desertification in downstream areas.
Chiang Kui-hsi (江貴熙), vice chairperson of Touwu Township Elected Representatives, said the project would not only lead to the forced eviction of more than 200 people living in a village in Touwu Township, but also restrictions on development projects in nearby villages to protect the quality of water, so the plan would affect nearly the whole township.
Wu asked the WRA to re-evaluate the water usage in Miaoli County and hold public hearings in the townships that would be affected by the project within the next three months to communicate with local residents, before submitting a construction plan to the Executive Yuan.
In response, Water Resources Agency Deputy Director-General Lai Bor-hsun (賴伯勳) said the reservoir has been planned according to the future development needs of the county and the engineering techniques used would be carefully chosen to mitigate the concerns of local residents.
“The fault only runs through a part of the area of the planned project and tunnel engineering techniques have improved, so if there are some geologically fractured zones the agency would certainly employ safe construction measures,” Lai said, adding that the agency would continue to communicate with local residents on the project.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
COGNITIVE WARFARE: Allegations that the documents were proof that the former US envoy tried to smuggle alcohol were designed to manipulate public opinion Leaked documents related to customs clearance procedures for vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) that have been circulating on the Internet appear to be an attempt to manipulate public opinion against the government, a source said on Sunday. A post on online platform Baoliao Commune (爆料公社) on Sunday showed documents it said were evidence that Hsiao had smuggled alcohol through customs with the assistance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and said that the documents were part of a 4GB data dump of confidential material acquired by hackers. In a rebuttal, the source said that they were not confidential documents, but rather