Residents in Tainan County have good reason to be wary of assurances by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) that toxic waste landfills in their backyard are nothing to be afraid of.
Taiwan has a long history of the economy trumping the environment, but public awareness about the health effects of pollution is growing. People nationwide want a cleaner, safer place to live, and agricultural produce that they don’t have to be afraid of eating.
Former backwaters like Chishang (池上), Taitung County, are becoming tourist attractions with their clean water and pristine rice paddies, and residents can see the money pouring in not only from tourist dollars, but also from agriculture. Therefore, it’s no wonder residents of Longci Township (龍崎), Tainan County, became angry when the EPA and Ocin Environmental Co refused to listen to their demands that an industrial waste management facility not be located in their backyard. A meeting to explain the project to wary residents descended into a violent clash, with residents throwing chairs and overturning tables as they realized their concerns were falling on deaf ears.
The EPA, which is tasked with protecting the environment, should be called the rubber stamp administration, because its main purpose seems to be to initiate dubious environmental assessments for huge corporations that almost always pass. Even if a corporation’s plans don’t pass environmental assessments, like the Erlin Science Park expansion plan, the EPA often gives the green light anyway. If local residents don’t like this, EPA officials then step forward to trumpet the economic benefits an industrial park, naptha cracker or toxic waste landfill will have.
In the case of the Longci landfill, the EPA and Tainan County Government officials touted the NT$60 million (US$1.92 million) that Ocin Environmental would be obligated to provide the government, as well as the 50 or so jobs the landfill would create. However, this doesn’t come close to addressing the concerns of residents, who are convinced that a toxic dump near their homes would damage the environment irreversibly, pollute their water and make food grown in the vicinity poisonous.
The EPA and the corporations engaged in these projects show a shocking level of arrogance when it comes to public concerns about the environment. In the case of Ocin, company officials insisted that the project would go forward despite environmental concerns.
In areas where corporations can’t get the EPA’s rubber stamp, they simply dump toxic sludge, slag and other pollutants illegally. Residents of Dongshan Township (東山), Tainan County, have been fighting Young Yang Environmental Industry Corp for years to get it to stop illegally polluting their environment. They recently brought along evidence to the EPA in Taipei to show that ground water near their homes now has about the same pH value as steel slag, the result of years of illegal dumping that was only publicly exposed by Typhoon Fanapi. However, instead of listening to their concerns and slapping a moratorium on the company’s operations, the EPA simply assured the residents that the groundwater was clean enough to drink and they shouldn’t worry.
It is the ultimate irony that these companies, and the EPA itself, even have the word “environmental” in their names. It’s like the a communist government calling itself democratic and saying it stands up for people’s rights.
It’s obvious that neither the corporations nor the government is going to help Tainan residents secure a clean environment. Therefore, it has now become necessary for people to get angry, throw chairs and protest outside government offices to have their voices heard. If they keep being ignored, they will have to step their campaign up a notch.
US president-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday named US Representative Mike Waltz, a vocal supporter of arms sales to Taiwan who has called China an “existential threat,” as his national security advisor, and on Thursday named US Senator Marco Rubio, founding member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China — a global, cross-party alliance to address the challenges that China poses to the rules-based order — as his secretary of state. Trump’s appointments, including US Representative Elise Stefanik as US ambassador to the UN, who has been a strong supporter of Taiwan in the US Congress, and Robert Lighthizer as US trade
A nation has several pillars of national defense, among them are military strength, energy and food security, and national unity. Military strength is very much on the forefront of the debate, while several recent editorials have dealt with energy security. National unity and a sense of shared purpose — especially while a powerful, hostile state is becoming increasingly menacing — are problematic, and would continue to be until the nation’s schizophrenia is properly managed. The controversy over the past few days over former navy lieutenant commander Lu Li-shih’s (呂禮詩) usage of the term “our China” during an interview about his attendance
Following the BRICS summit held in Kazan, Russia, last month, media outlets circulated familiar narratives about Russia and China’s plans to dethrone the US dollar and build a BRICS-led global order. Each summit brings renewed buzz about a BRICS cross-border payment system designed to replace the SWIFT payment system, allowing members to trade without using US dollars. Articles often highlight the appeal of this concept to BRICS members — bypassing sanctions, reducing US dollar dependence and escaping US influence. They say that, if widely adopted, the US dollar could lose its global currency status. However, none of these articles provide
Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), the son of former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee Politburo member and former Chongqing Municipal Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai (薄熙來), used his British passport to make a low-key entry into Taiwan on a flight originating in Canada. He is set to marry the granddaughter of former political heavyweight Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政), the founder of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital in Yilan County’s Luodong Township (羅東). Bo Xilai is a former high-ranking CCP official who was once a challenger to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) for the chairmanship of the CCP. That makes Bo Guagua a bona fide “third-generation red”
RSS