At least five government agencies are guilty of dereliction of duty for sanctioning a mining project in a state-assigned “drinking water source quality protection area” next to Sun Moon Lake in Nantou County, environmental groups and local residents alleged yesterday.
The Citizens of the Earth, Taiwan (CET) activist group, accompanied by an environmental lawyer, a village warden from Nantou County’s Yuchi Township (魚池) and the associate general manager of the Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village, accused five central and local agencies — the Environmental Protection Administration, Council of Agriculture’s Forestry Bureau, and Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Bureau of Mine and the local Nantou County Government’s Environmental Protection Bureau and Agriculture Department — of handling the application of a mining company to resume a mining project on Shueishe Mountain (水社大山) without heeding regulations that prohibit the excavation.
While the location was legally registered as a mining area more than four decades ago, the mine had not be in operation for 30 years, until last year, when residents found that a company had resumed resource extraction after getting the green light by submitting its — allegedly flawed — “soil and water conservation plan,” the group said.
Photo: Tsai Ying, Taipei Times
“However, the whole operation was in serious violation of the existing laws,” CET researcher Lu Yi-chi (呂翊齊) said.
“The place has been designated as a ‘drinking water source quality protection area’ since 1998 and the Drinking Water Management Act (飲用水管理條例) amended in 1997 also prohibits ‘extraction of soil and rock, mineral exploration or mineral mining’ in ‘areas within a certain distance of a drinking water source quality protection area or drinking water intake point.’”
The Mining Act (礦業法), which was amended in 2003, also prohibits mining in the protected areas, he added.
“What is even more absurd is that the local government’s environmental protection bureau replied to a inquiry issued by the mining company confirming that their mines are located in the state-assigned drinking water source protection area,” environmental lawyer Hsieh Meng-yu (謝孟羽) said.
The warden from the affected village, Lai Chien-cheng (賴見成), said that after the 921 Earthquake, the soil has become soft and typhoons have caused serious debris flows in the region: “even making farmland require applications.”
“It is simply unacceptable for the mining company to continue its work there,” he said.
The Formosan Aboriginal Culture Village, an amusement park situated next to the village, also objected to the project in solidarity with local residents.
The alliance of stakeholders called on government agencies to withdraw their authorization to the mining company immediately and for prosecutors and the Control Yuan to investigate the agencies’ dereliction of duty.
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