The NT$1.244 billion (US$42.5 million at the current exchange rate) fine given to Formosa Chemicals and Fibre Corp (FCFC, 台化) by the Changhua County Government was yesterday overruled by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA).
In October 2016, the company’s Changhua plant was shut down after the Changhua Environmental Protection Bureau rejected its application to extend the coal permits for its three cogeneration boilers.
The coal used at the company’s M22 boiler from January 2008 to September 2016 did not correspond with the quality of coal it said it was using in its environmental report, the bureau said at the time.
The bureau issued the fine in November last year, saying that FCFC had breached Article 17 of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法) when it used lesser quality coal than claimed.
The company later that month filed an administrative appeal with the EPA.
The EPA Committee for Petitions and Appeals yesterday revoked the bureau’s administrative action at its final meeting on the case.
The bureau should have sampled and tested FCFC’s different coal sources to see how much of an impact their quality would have had on the environment, committee Executive Secretary Su Chung-kuang (蘇中光) said.
Using coal of varied quality does not necessarily result in more pollution, as the company might have spent more on regulating pollution, the committee said in its report, which was released yesterday.
The committee found that the company’s use of coal was “not always” of lesser quality during the January 2008 to September 2016 period, Su said.
The bureau also failed to observe that a penalty can cover a three-year period at most, as stipulated in the Administrative Penalty Act (行政罰法), so the company’s coal use before 2014 should not have been considered in the fine, Su said.
While the bureau referenced the NT$440 million penalty that the Hualien Environmental Protection Bureau handed Taiwan Cement Corp’s (台灣水泥) Ho-ping Power Co (和平電廠), the two cases are not comparable because the FCFC did not, like the power plant, generate more electricity than promised in its report, he said.
The bureau yesterday said it was discussing how to respond to the EPA’s ruling, and had not responded as of press time last night.
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