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.
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