Yunlin County-based fishers yesterday called on the Wpd Taiwan Energy to build its proposed offshore wind turbines farther away from coastal fishing areas and to stop threatening local fishers.
Wpd has been one of Taiwan’s major wind energy developers since it bought InfraVest Wind Power in 2016, including a projected windmill farm with 80 offshore wind turbines.
The turbines would be located in waters 8 to 17km off the nation’s west coast and produce 640 megawatts (MW), the company’s Web site showed.
The fishing industry is by no means against the national policy to transition to green energy, but the fishers demand transparency of the project, said Lee Ping-shun (李平順), chairman of a coastal fisheries association in the county.
The fishers had been unaware of how the project’s construction would affect their livelihood, Lee said, adding that coastal waters are the natural habitat for many fish species that fisheries rely on.
Lee said the company should not establish turbines within 5.5km off the coast or where the water is less than 30m deep, while also calling on the company to refrain from using large machinery to drill into the seabed.
The association also called on Wpd to notify residents of the construction schedule, and offer compensation to those who are affected.
Citing a previous incident in which a subcontractor of Wpd allegedly hired people to disturb a round of negotiations, local fisher Lin Chuan-fa (林全發) said the incident damaged Wpd’s credibility, even if the company later terminated its relationship with the subcontractor.
Fisher Hsu Chin-yuan (許秦源) said that his family had been in the business for three generations, and he earned an average of NT$600,000 for his monthly catch, but after Wpd started construction, he has earned significantly less, as low as NT$80,000 last month.
Hsu said that the company had already started construction by the time he learned of the project.
“I was completely in the dark as I had not heard about any public hearings being held on the issue,” Hsu said, adding that he and other fishers were at a loss of what to do.
Environmental Rights Foundation Taichung director Chung Han-shu (鍾瀚樞) said that there was a lack of communication and the project was procedurally flawed.
Chung called on the government to help resolve the issue and help find a balance between safeguarding fisher’s livelihoods and protecting the environment, including policies to transition to green energy.
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Huang’s body was found just outside the bathroom and showed no signs of a struggle, and no alcohol or drugs were found Singer and actor Alien Huang (黃鴻升) was found dead at his home in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投) yesterday. He was 36. Huang was also known by the nickname Xiao Gui (“little ghost”). His body was found when his father went to check on him after being unable to reach him by telephone, and called emergency services to the house at 11am, the Taipei City Police Department said. Huang’s body, which was discovered just outside the bathroom, showed no signs of a physical struggle, and he appeared to have been dead for some time, police said, adding that no drugs or alcohol were
CONFIRMED IN PHILIPPINES: The CECC would conduct contact tracing for the migrant workers to determine if they had come into contact with elderly people or children Six Filipinos tested positive for COVID-19 upon returning home from Taiwan, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday as it reported a case of imported COVID-19 infection, bringing the number of confirmed cases in Taiwan to 500. Philippine authorities reported four of the cases through the National IHR Focal Point, while the other two were reported by the company that they had worked for in Taiwan. The six — five women and one man — are aged from their 20s to 40s, and worked as in-home care workers, domestic workers, factory workers and sailors in Taiwan, said Minister of Health and
TIME FOR CHANGE: Most of those at a public hearing organized by the DPP’s Chung Chia-pin also agreed that the Control Yuan and Examination Yuan should be abolished Taiwan needs a new constitution, as the current one was adopted in Nanjing in 1946, when the Republic of China (ROC) represented all of China, while the Control Yuan and Examination Yuan should be abolished, legal experts and academics said yesterday during a public hearing at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei. Chang Kun-sheng (張錕盛), a law professor and secretary-general of the Taiwan Administrative Law Association, said that it is time to draft a new constitution. The ROC Constitution was adopted during a National Constituent Assembly meeting in Nanjing shortly after World War II and before the Chinese Civil War had fully erupted,
The COVID-19 pandemic might not have originated from a seafood market in Wuhan, China, National Taiwan University College of Public Health professor Tony Chen (陳秀熙) said yesterday. While many countries are experiencing second waves of COVID-19 infections, many are also lifting lockdowns to revive their economies, allowing travelers to cross national borders, Chen said. Academics have been questioning whether genetic mutations in the novel coronavirus in different countries have made it more infectious, he added. Academics from different backgrounds have conducted phylogenetic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences, he said, adding that the studies can help scientists understand how the virus spread among
RSS