Dozens of farmers yesterday protested in front of the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) in Taipei against the Gaoping Great Lakes (高屏大湖) project as the case was being reviewed by the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) general assembly.
The Water Resources Agency’s cross-border water channeling project which aims to address water shortages by building five artificial lakes in a nearly 700 hectare area on the border of Pingtung County’s Ligang Township (里港) and Greater Kaohsiung’s Meinong District (美濃), has been heavily criticized by local farmers and environmental groups.
An EIA ad hoc meeting in January suggested two options for the general assembly: Allow the development of one lake first, then redo the assessment, or reject all development plans.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
The protesters said spending more than NT$10 billion (US$337 million) on the project was a waste of money, as it would destroy good quality land used for growing high-yield green soybeans with a high export value, adding that water conservation could be achieved by simply improving the area’s tap water leakage rate.
“The area forms a natural pond whenever there is a typhoon, but I am concerned about flooding if dikes are erected for artificial lakes,” said a local resident surnamed Liang (梁), who lives near the site of the proposed develoment in Ligang.
Citizen of the Earth Taiwan executive director Lee Ken-cheng (李根政) said the Greater Kaohsiung and Pingtung County governments have proposed alternative solutions including water recycling from household and industrial wastewater, improvement of the Donggang Creek (東港溪) to increase water supply and improving tap water leakage rates, which could contribute to sustainable development.
Officials from the local governments said as the project’s data is incomplete and the necessity and urgency of the project is still undecided, the developer should provide an improved project plan.
The final decision made at the meeting yesterday was to reject the Water Resources Agency’s current proposal and to ask central and local governments to find alternative solutions for land use and water allocation, as well as conducting a comprehensive review of the necessity of the project.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS