The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday ordered that an application by Rich Mineral Co to start mining in Hualien County’s Sioulin Township (秀林) must undergo a second-stage environmental impact assessment (EIA) over concerns about the damage mining activities could cause local flora and fauna.
The application proposed expanding a 7 hectare Dajhuoshuei (大濁水) mining site previously granted by the Bureau of Mines to 39.8 hectares, which Rich Mineral representatives said would help the company generate a combined output of about 450,000 tonnes of marble annually.
Since the proposed expansion would take place in a natural forest, problems manifested themselves as soon as the EIA meeting began.
Despite Rich Mineral representatives saying that during plant restoration, they had posted a fauna survival rate of more than 70 percent — as it promised — EIA committee member Chien Lien-kwei (簡連貴) said the results of the firm’s fauna restoration efforts were sliding each year.
The main source of contention came when the participants discussed the detrimental effects noises from mining-related explosions would have on a dozen protected animal species inhabiting the mining site, which include the Japalura ruei, crested serpent eagles (Spilornis cheela) and Taiwanese serows (Capricornis serow), most of which are native to Taiwan.
Committee member Chang Hsueh-wen (張學文) said that research he conducted showed that 87.7 percent of flora and 80 percent of fauna found in the plot are native to Taiwan, while his colleague Chang Tien-chin (張添晉) urged Rich Mineral to justify in its EIA report the explosions it wants to carry out.
Chang Hsueh-wen said that the noises caused by the explosions would frighten the animals, as would the damage to their environment.
In response, Rich Mineral representatives said that once damage to the animals’ habitat has been restored, all the animals would return, and that the company would seek ways to use fewer explosions, for example, by increasing the concentration of dynamite used.
However, committee member Lung Shih-chun (龍世俊) later referred to a satellite image that showed that a 4.3 hectare area in which Rich Mineral said it had conducted reforestation exhibited a very light shade of green, indicating that plants restored in the mine’s surrounding areas were mostly grass.
Despite the company’s promise to reduce explosions, the committee resolved to reject the application and ordered that it undergo a second-stage EIA, during which the company is to broaden the scope of its assessment of the potential impact mining could cause the local ecology to an area south of the mining site, as well as propose a feasible plan to restore plant species native to Taiwan.
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