Farmer fron Nantou County yesterday protested in front of the Executive Yuan in Taipei calling for the appropriation of 7.5 hectares of farmland for a controversial incinerator construction project proposed by the Nantou County Government to be canceled.
The appropriated farmland is in the county’s Mingjian Township (名間), the major tea production area in Taiwan.
The county government has been criticized for forcing through the passage of the proposal despite the improper site, and for having a conflict of interest in both its developer and supervisory authority.
Photo: Liu Pin-chuan, Taipei Times
Its decision to convene the project’s environmental impact assessment meetings on Wednesday and Thursday next week further caused a backlash, as local tea farmers would be busy with harvests and would not be able to fully participate in the meetings.
“The incinerator would be built in the township’s specific agricultural zone ... such an air pollutant-producing facility is to be erected on our arable land while our agricultural products are distributed nationwide and internationally,” a local farmer said.
“We are here solely to demand that the central government stop allowing the county government to arbitrarily handle the matter,” he said.
The project has been strongly opposed by residents since its first environmental impact assessment review, Taiwan Watch Institute secretary-general Herlin Hsieh (謝和霖) said.
The county government is riding roughshod over democratic procedures and insists the incinerator be set up at a site that is considered inappropriate not only by local farmers and environmental groups, but also by academics it has consulted, he said.
Government Watch Alliance executive director Hsu Hsin-hsin (許心欣) said that the National Property Administration has appropriated farmland to the county government for use by the project without prior approval from the Executive Yuan and the Ministry of Agriculture.
The Executive Yuan should cancel the appropriation of the farmland, especially as the farmland was appropriated without land-use conversion, which contravenes the National Property Act (國有財產法), she said.
A separate news conference was held at the legislature in Taipei, urging the county government to reselect the project site and respect local farmers’ right to participate in the project’s review meetings.
Speakers at the news conference expressed disapproval that the county government mobilized about 100 police officers for the review meetings on Jan. 31 and Monday last week.
Police intervention at the meetings had a chilling effect on local residents and undermined procedural justice, they said.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
RSS