The Tourism Bureau was told on Friday to withdraw a hotel project in Hualien County’s Fenglin Township (鳳林) because it was dramatically different from the campsite project the bureau originally submitted.
Located on the border between Fenglin and Guangfu (光復) townships, the bureau received approval from the Environmental Protection Administration’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Committee in 2000 to develop the 48 hectare Fenglin Recreation Area into a center for camping, water sports and air activities.
The area is already well known as a paragliding base, thanks to strong rising air currents in the East Rift Valley.
The bureau, in a bid to increase the project’s flexibility and attract private sector investment, proposed revising the project by adding a 400-room hotel, which would increase the designed building area by 4.4 times to 43,100m2.
The bureau’s East Rift Valley National Scenic Area Administration, which represented the bureau during the EIA reviews, said that according to the Regulations on Non-urban Land Use Control (非都市土地使用管制規則), the Fenglin recreation area is designated as a scenic area where recreational development is allowed, including camping sites and hotel facilities.
The approved campsite project was put forward as a “sample proposal” instead of a final development plan, with the bureau telling the EIA committee that it was leaning toward a build–operate–transfer hotel project, and the 400-room facility was designed according to the area’s maximum capacity.
However, the committee on Friday refused to accept the bureau’s new proposal, saying the hotel project was extremely different from the campsite project and appeared poorly planned.
“The hotel project is a totally different story from the campsite in terms of development intensity. The developer should not assume a revision of an approved development plan could pass an environmental review just because the campsite plan was approved,” committee member Yu Fan-chieh (游繁結) said.
The committee told the bureau to withdraw the hotel project and submit a new proposal should it come up with a new and detailed development plan for the Fenglin area.
An assistant to New Power Party Legislator Kawlo Iyun Pacidal attended the meeting and told the committee that the Fenglin area has traditionally been inhibited by Amis, and any development project involves traditional Aboriginal communities should win the consent of those communities’ residents.
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