The state-owned Chinese Petroleum Corporation (CPC) yesterday received a conditional go-ahead from the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) to renovate its third naphtha cracker in Kaohsiung County’s Linyuan Township (林園鄉), much to the chagrin of environmentalists, who accused the EPA of deciding on the matter before the review began.
The plant was built in 1974 and began an environmental impact assessment (EIA) process for its renewal proposal in 2005. Yesterday’s decision was a complete turn-around from a ruling in October in which the EIA panel returned the case to its case committee, saying that if CPC still wanted to begin the project, it needed to go through a new EIA.
Before yesterday’s EIA meeting began, dozens of environmentalists opposing the project gathered in front of the EPA to call on EIA panelists to “be fair and unaffected by government pressure to pursue economic prosperity.”
The crowd was separated by the police from hundreds of CPC workers chanting slogans and songs, including Why? and “Workers Unite for Victory,” urging EIA members to help sustain their jobs and improve their work environment, “especially in the state of the current global economy.”
According to the ruling, CPC can begin the renewal, a NT$6.5 billion (US$196 million) project, next year and build a new factory that will triple the production of the old facility — from 230,000 tonnes of polystyrene a year to up to 800,000 tonnes.
CPC promised that the volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions will be reduced from the 2,345 tonnes a year now to 2,200 tonnes at the new plant, a 10 percent reduction.
However, the EIA panel also mandated several conditions for CPC before it could start construction, including promising to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 54 percent, and planting trees to neutralize the remaining emissions so that the total reduction would be at least 60 percent.
The EIA additionally demanded CPC conduct an epidemiological investigation as well as conduct a health risk evaluation for local residents.
In response to the decision, Mercy on the Earth director Lee Ken-cheng (李根政) said: “The case could have set an example for all renewal projects in the Petroleum Chemical Industry, as many of the factories like the third naphtha cracker were built in the 1970s.”
However, Lee said that the EIA process for the case had a “fundamental procedural problem.”
“On Oct. 8, the EIA panel rejected the proposal, but promised CPC that once it entered a new case committee review process, the proposal would be sent to the EIA panel again within two months — that is essentially agreeing to the project before it was even reviewed,” Lee said.
Lee said that by setting a time frame for the case committee to complete the process and by sending the case to the EIA panel, “Any case would be able to get a conditional okay.”
In addition, Lee said the EIA conditions were not written “professionally enough.”
First, as air pollution in the greater Kaohsiung and Pingtung area is already severe, “If there is a renewal, it needs to improve the air quality there.”
“A 10 percent decrease in VOCs is unacceptable and meaningless — it will mean that the same level in the past 30 years will be maintained; instead, the total emissions for the area should be capped,” Lee said.
Also, health risks for local residents should be specified in detail, Lee said.
“Whether the cancer risk is one in 100,000, or one in a million, you need to specify the standard, or [during execution] there is going to be more debate,” Lee said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS