Opponents of a plan to extend the high-speed rail (HSR) to Yilan County yesterday filed an administrative appeal against its environmental impact assessment (EIA) conclusion, while more than 200 supporters protested outside the Ministry of Environment.
The Alliance Overseeing the High Speed Rail Extension, the Yilan Environmental Protection Union and the Taiwan Railway Union (TRU) convened a news conference in front of the ministry building in Taipei along with Public Nudge and former minister of transportation and communications Hochen Tan (賀陳旦).
They questioned the rationality and legality of the EIA review while delivering a petition for an administrative appeal to the ministry.
Photo: Huang Yi-ching, Taipei Times
Alliance convener Kang Fang-min (康芳銘) said the project is intertwined with the HSR Yilan Station District development plan, as potential economic benefits created by the development of the district justify the extension.
However, the EIA review failed to include the plan, even though an EIA committee member voiced concern about it, meaning that the conclusion was based on incomplete information, Kang said.
The project and the plan involve large-scale land expropriation in the county, including more than 400 hectares of farmland and demolition of more than 140 private residential buildings, but that issue was left out of the EIA report presented by the Railway Bureau, Kang said.
Construction could generate more than 9.6 million cubic meters of construction-surplus soil and stone, but the storage and disposal plan has caused doubts among at least four EIA committee members, he said.
TRU board director Chao Shang-che (趙尚?) urged the ministry to reconsider a proposal to build a straight railway connecting Taipei and Yilan, which was rejected by the EIA committee in 2006 due to its potential adverse environmental impact.
The proposal was dusted off in 2009, but was shelved due to backlash from the Taipei Feitsui Reservoir Administration, the county government and residents of Taipei’s Nangang District (南港) who were facing relocation.
Taiwan Railway Corp (TRC) employees’ labor rights and the company’s revenue could be affected by the HSR extension, which would marginalize railway development and undermine railway operations nationwide, Chao said.
On the other hand, more than 200 pro-extension local officials and residents held a rival news conference to voice discontent about the appeal, with Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Chun-yu (陳俊宇) attending to express support.
“The land is worth NT$3 million [US$94,702] per ping here,” Jhuangwei Township (壯圍) Mayor Shen Ching-shan (沈清山) said while pointing at the ground in front of the ministry.
The value of farmland in the county ranges from NT$7,000 to NT$13,000 per ping, he said.
“Why can’t our land in Yilan be more valuable, while people in Taipei, Hsinchu County, Taoyuan or Miaoli County can have housing worth millions of dollars per ping?” Shen said.
The HSR extension would make more young people willing to stay and help attract more people to work in the county, he said.
TRC chairman James Jeng (鄭光遠) yesterday at a separate event said the TRC is optimistic about the HSR extension, although it is estimated to cause an annual NT$627 million decrease in TRC’s revenue.
The HSR was built for long-
distance transportation, while the TRC makes profits mostly through mid and short-distance services, he said, adding that the TRC expects its losses from the extension would be considered a policy-induced loss by the government.
TRC president Feng Hui-sheng (馮輝昇) said the HSR extension would compete with the TRC not only for passengers traveling between Taipei and Yilan, but for those traveling from Taichung, Chiayi County or Tainan to Yilan County.
That could mean an annual loss of NT$627 million for TRC, he said, adding that ridership is estimated to decline by 9,000 passengers per day on weekdays and 17,000 passengers per day on weekends by 2051.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS