Critics opposed to the Taoyuan Aerotropolis development project yesterday asked the government to immediately stop expropriating land for the construction of a third runway at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport until the plan passes a review of the Environmental Protection Administration’s (EPA) Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Committee.
The petition came after Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) last week said that Taoyuan International Airport Corp (TIAC) and the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) should expedite the construction of a third runway at the airport, adding that a consensus was unanimously reached between the Taoyuan City Government and Taoyuan City Council.
Cheng reportedly made the comment to dismiss speculation that the city should ditch its support for a third runway, as both the Taichung and Kaohsiung airports are seeking to upgrade to international airports.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The southern airports are reportedly looking at upgrades to help with air traffic heading to Taoyuan airport, after flooding on June 2 severely disrupted the operation of the nation’s main international gateway.
Critics said the construction of a third runway at Taoyuan airport would encounter several “environmental land mines” that would compromise the safety of the runway.
They said the site chosen to build the third runway consists of soft, sandy soil, which would make it difficult to bear the weight of aircraft. Meanwhile, the designated site is only 20m from the Shalun Oil Depot, which can accommodate 130,000 kiloliters of fuel, they said.
The critics added that aircraft landing or departing on the new runway would face the threat from a crosswind, as well as bird strikes, as the runway is close to the seaside.
The runway construction would also need to reclaim four ponds and destroy more than 2,000 hectares of farmland, they said, adding it would force 20,000 residents to relocate and expose the airport to a higher risk of flooding.
Tsai Mei-fen (蔡梅芬), a resident living in a borough near the airport, said CAA officials had said in a meeting with local residents that it would take a massive landfill on the north side of the runway, which is in a lower-lying region, to prevent flooding, with the height of the soil used for the landfill reaching 13m to 14m.
She said that the officials even advised residents living near the north side of the runway to relocate because of the risks from floodwater.
“If the runway could face a threat from floodwater, why is it not reviewed by the EIA Committee first?” Tsai said.
Lawyer Wang Hsieh-ju (王絃如), who represents the residents who might be affected by the construction, as well as the activists opposing the project, said their petition, which requests the developer to submit the construction plan to the EIA Committee, would be reviewed by the Taipei High Administrative Court, which is scheduled to hear arguments from the developer and the residents next month.
“The EPA has agreed with us that the construction should be subject to an EIA review. What we disagreed about was when the EIA review should be done,” Wang said.
Wang said that both the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法) and its rules of enforcement state that a development project should be subject to an EIA review, even when a developer is still conducting feasibility research into a project.
According to Wang, TIAC has already set the range, location and functions of different zones in its planning for the construction of the third runway and the Taoyuan Aerotropolis’ free trade zone, and that the procedures required to expropriate land have already been activated.
The developer should have already submitted the construction plan for an EIA review by now, Wang said.
However, the EPA does not equate land expropriation with the actions of actual development, she added.
“In that case, the EIA review has to be done after the land is expropriated and the houses on the land have been demolished. Rather than identifying the potential risks that the development plan would pose to the environment, the EIA review by then would serve as nothing more than an endorsement of the construction,” she said, adding that the developer should be fined if it keeps refusing to do the EIA review.
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