The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) yesterday said it was the decisions made by the Legislative Yuan and Taoyuan City Government to expand the number of people eligible to attend the preparatory meetings for land expropriation hearings that caused a delay in completing Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport’s third runway project, adding that the city government should focus on acquiring the land needed for the project.
The CAA issued an official statement after Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) was quoted in media reports as criticizing the agency, saying it was extremely inefficient and short-sighted, as it will take at least 15 years just to finish an airport runway.
The central government might as well give up because the same project would take China only three years to finish, while democratic countries could get the job done in five years, he said.
The CAA said it was asked by Cheng, and also by lawmakers serving on the legislature’s Transportation Committee, to ask all the residents within the Phase I Development Area of the Taoyuan Aerotropolis Project to attend preparatory meetings for the administrative hearings, rather than just the owners of farmland whose properties are to be expropriated.
Because of the request, the CAA said the number of people it was supposed to notify to attend preparatory meetings rose from approximately 8,000 to about 20,000, so it then had to postpone the administrative hearings by more than seven months.
It is aiming to finish administrative hearings before the end of April and the results would be submitted to the Ministry of the Interior in the second half of the year to help the CAA determine the properties to be expropriated and the ratio of “land for compensation” that should be distributed back to owners, the CAA said.
From next year through 2018, both the Ministry of the Interior and the Taoyuan City Government still have a series of procedures to fulfill before the city can begin acquiring lands for the Taoyuan Aerotropolis Project, which includes building the third runway.
Because the number of residents to be relocated is unprecedented in the nation’s history, the ministry’s urban planning commission required the CAA to preserve communities and to relocate residents whose land is to be expropriated only after new accommodation for these residents has been built. The measure has nevertheless increased the difficulties of acquiring the land, the CAA said.
It said Taoyuan International Airport Corp would try to finish planning and building the third runway over the next five years, but it emphasized that the key is to obtain the properties needed to build it.
“Such a difficult task requires the division of labor between central and local governments. Both need to ascertain that they have completed all the legal procedures to protect the interests of the residents and avoid disputes with civilians,” the CAA said.
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