The Freeway No. 7 project is to go into a second-phase review process, despite a previous Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) meeting suggesting otherwise, the EIA General Assembly concluded yesterday.
An EIA specialist meeting late last month suggested the project, proposed by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, to build a 23km stretch of freeway from the Renwu (仁武) interchange to Kaohsiung Harbor, was inappropriate.
Environmental groups criticized the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) for allegedly altering the meeting’s conclusions by adding the option of having it “go for a second phase EIA review” — an accusation the agency denied.
At the EIA General Assembly, the convener of the previous meeting of environmental specialists said that they were concerned about the negative impact from air and noise pollution on nearby residents, damage to the landscape and to the habitat of birds of prey, while also raising questions about whether the project would improve traffic congestion on National Freeway No. 1.
However, National Freeway Bureau Director-General Tseng Dar-jen (曾大仁) said that the freeway project is important for access to Kaohsiung Harbor as National Freeway No. 1 has reached its capacity and will need the new stretch to disperse traffic flow. The project would not necessarily cause significant negative impact to the environment, he added.
Kaohsiung Civil Servant Citizen Watch member Lee Chung-chi (李重志) said that there is no way to estimate the amount of traffic relief the new freeway project would produce, because the operating model of the planned “free economic pilot zone” is still unclear and that spending an average of more than NT$2.6 billion per kilometer of freeway is too expensive.
Frank Yang (楊俊朗), a researcher with Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan, said the freeway would cause air and noise pollution, as it plans to cut through Fengshan (鳳山) — one of the very few green spaces in Greater Kaohsiung.
Following a vote, the EIA General Assembly concluded the case would go forward for a second-phase review process.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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