Opposition legislators today urged the central government to halt production of 58 wind turbines in Taitung County, citing public opinion polls that predominately oppose the project.
The turbines would be built along Provincial Highways 9 and 11, turning Taiwan’s most beautiful, internationally renowned coastline into a row of large artificial fans, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Huang Chien-pin (黃建賓) said.
The wind turbines would threaten the local ecosystem, emit low-frequency noise that would affect public health and impact indigenous people’s traditional territories, Huang said.
Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times
According to a poll conducted by Taiwan Real Survey, 50.7 percent of Taitung residents do not support installing wind turbines along the county’s coast and only 24.2 percent support it, he said.
There is also a plan to build 14 wind turbines along a 7km stretch of the coast of Yilan County’s Wuchieh (五結) and Suao (蘇澳) townships, KMT Legislator Wu Tsung-hsien (吳宗憲) said.
This area includes the Lanyang Rivermouth Waterbird Refuge and Wushierjia Wetlands, which have sensitive ecosystems that would be destroyed by the wind turbines’ construction, Wu said.
It would also impact local landscapes and public health, he added.
Independent Legislator May Chin (高金素梅) said that data from Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) has shown that wind power is inefficient.
She questioned why the government would want to destroy Taiwan’s last piece of pristine coastline to build wind turbines, which have already been proven as inefficient energy sources.
KMT Legislator Sra Kacaw said that leaders of the Amis indigenous communities in Taitung’s Changbin Township (長濱) have already signed a joint statement calling on the government and developers to halt production of the turbines.
This shows that local communities already have a clear stance against wind turbine production, which would damage the environment and traditional territories, he said.
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
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