Residents of Kaohsiung’s Luzhu (路竹) and Hunei (湖內) districts yesterday filed a lawsuit with the Kaohsiung High Administrative Court to revoke environmental approval for iron wire and screw factories to be built by Chen Nan Iron Wire Co (震南鐵線公司), citing environmental concerns and procedural flaws in the review process.
Lee Yao-ching (李耀慶) and Hsu Tung-yuan (許東源) filed the lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), saying that the exclusion of local residents during the environmental review of the project invalidates the results, as residents did not know of the project until earlier this year.
The Kaohsiung City Government passed the environmental review of the Chen Nan plants in May last year.
Lee and Hsu filed a petition with the EPA to revoke the project in April, but the EPA rejected the petition in August, saying that Lee and Hsu did not reside within 5km of the proposed site, nor could they prove that the development would have a negative impact on them and, therefore, they should not be considered as interested parties.
Lee said that the Erren River (二仁溪), where sewage from the proposed factories would be discharged, is a water source for all the fish farms in Hunei, which was an environmental impact that the EPA had not taken into consideration.
The proposed factory site in Hunei is owned by state-run Taiwan Sugar Corp, which was given approval to lease the property to private businesses for industrial development in 2006.
Approval for Chen Nan to open an iron wire and screw factory in the area sparked a series of protests, as residents said that the factory’s manufacturing processes involve pickling metals in acid to remove impurities and oxides, and that wastewater could significantly affect farmland and the aquaculture industry downstream of the Erren River.
Hsu said that residents have been ignored, and were denied access to a pre-construction public hearing in August, which was heavily policed.
Lee and Hsu said that they filed the lawsuit to seek judicial remedy.
Environmental Jurists Association lawyer Kuo Hung-yi (郭鴻儀) said that the environmental review of the project reversed the cause and effect by approving the project under the assumption that the development would not have a significant environmental impact if the company could meet certain obligations specified by the review committee in the future, rather than referring the project to a second round of reviews to ascertain whether the company could meet those obligations.
The company has not revealed the design of its discharge pipes or detailed its wastewater treatment plan, which could increase contamination risks to local farmland and the underground water supply, the association said.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
THE TOUR: Pope Francis has gone on a 12-day visit to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore. He was also invited to Taiwan The government yesterday welcomed Pope Francis to the Asia-Pacific region and said it would continue extending an invitation for him to visit Taiwan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made the remarks as Pope Francis began a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific on Monday. He is to travel about 33,000km by air to visit Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Singapore, and would arrive back in Rome on Friday next week. It would be the longest and most challenging trip of Francis’ 11-year papacy. The 87-year-old has had health issues over the past few years and now uses a wheelchair. The ministry said
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
RSS