A campaign to start a referendum against a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project near an algal reef off Taoyuan has been extended to Wednesday next week, after generating massive support over the past few days, campaigners said yesterday.
State-run utility CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC) is building an LNG terminal off the coast of Datan Borough (大潭) in the city’s Guanyin District (觀音), a project that was approved by the Environmental Protection Administration in 2018.
The Rescue Datan’s Algal Reefs Alliance is making a last-minute push to secure the needed 350,000 signatures so that the referendum to conserve the reef can proceed to the next stage of the process and reach a vote in August, it said.
Photo: CNA
The proposed referendum would ask: “Do you agree that CPC’s LNG terminal should be relocated from its planned site on the algal reef coast of Datan and its adjacent waters?”
The campaign was originally to end yesterday so the alliance could start reviewing the submissions to meet the Central Election Committee’s March 17 deadline.
However, after collecting about 240,000 signatures, the alliance urged supporters to continue submitting signatures until Wednesday next week.
The campaign, which started last year, had been relatively low-key until recently, when an increasing number of celebrities and political figures spoke out in support of preserving the reef.
The alliance said it has been receiving new signatures at a rate of 30,000 to 60,000 per day over the past few days.
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said earlier this week that every effort has been made to avoid environmental damage caused by the LNG project, while securing the country’s energy supply.
“We want to stop the coal-burning generation of electricity as soon as possible to cut carbon emissions, so this is a choice we had to make,” Su said.
For instance, the government has already minimized the impact on the reef by reducing the construction area of the proposed LNG station by 90 percent, from the 232 hectares approved by the previous Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration, he said.
The government would also establish a fund to protect the reefs, he added.
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
NUMBERs IMBALANCE: More than 4 million Taiwanese have visited China this year, while only about half a million Chinese have visited here Beijing has yet to respond to Taiwan’s requests for negotiation over matters related to the recovery of cross-strait tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. Taiwan’s tourism authority issued the statement after Chinese-language daily the China Times reported yesterday that the government’s policy of banning group tours to China does not stop Taiwanese from visiting the country. As of October, more than 4.2 million had traveled to China this year, exceeding last year. Beijing estimated the number of Taiwanese tourists in China could reach 4.5 million this year. By contrast, only 500,000 Chinese tourists are expected in Taiwan, the report said. The report
RSS