A hotel project at Taitung County’s Shanyuan Bay (杉原灣) yesterday passed an environmental review, with activists saying the move presented a danger to the environment and damaged Aboriginal rights.
An environmental impact assessment was held at the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) over the Shanyuan Palm Beach Resort project, which plans to use a 25-hectare plot of land to build a 550-room hotel complex — the largest ongoing tourism development on the east coast.
Conditions in the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法) meant that the assessment was to evaluate modifications made to the project after it received environmental approval in 2002, because construction did not begin within three years of its initial approval, meaning it had to undergo an analysis of differences between current environmental conditions and conditions at the time permission was granted for the plan.
The project cleared the review following four hours of talks centered on the hotel’s use of traditional Aboriginal territories and potential effects on local coral ecology.
The analysis of differences began in 2010 and the developer ended a six-year-long review with promises to reduce wastewater by 44 percent and to recycle all its wastewater, but environmentalists and Taitung residents protested against the project.
The proposed development site is only 200m from an area of sea that is home to one-third of Taiwan’s coral species, the Taiwan Environmental Information Center said, adding that the project and increased tourism might endanger marine species.
Showing soft stones collected from the proposed hotel site, Citizens of the Earth researcher Chuang Mu-hua (莊慕華) said the area is geologically unstable and not suitable for development.
“According to a report by the Tourism Bureau, there would be a surplus of more than 1,000 hotel rooms if all development projects in Shanyuan Bay were completed. Taitung does not need that much development,” Chaung said.
While the developer said it had acquired consent from a local Aboriginal community to develop the area, local Amis resident Sinsing said the consent was invalid, because residents were not properly informed of the development and a meeting between the developer and residents was procedurally flawed.
The Environmental Impact Assessment Committee approved the project, with 10 of its 17 members in attendance voting in favor.
“The developer promised to reduce and recycle its wastewater, and the hotel’s wastewater treatment capacity is able to handle torrential rain. The environmental impact of the hotel is not expected to be much,” committee member Yu Fan-chieh (游繁結) said.
Citizens of the Earth researcher Huang Ching-ting (黃靖庭) said the group was deeply disappointed by the result, adding that the Council of Indigenous Peoples did not express support for Aboriginal residents at the meeting, while the Tourism Bureau did not endorse its analysis of the county’s tourism capacity.
Citizens of the Earth said it might take legal action over the approval.
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