Plans at the Central Taiwan Science Park to develop a fourth phase expansion in Changhua County’s Erlin Township (二林) were delayed yesterday by the Environmental Protection Administration’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) panel, which ruled that the park must submit additional information about the project.
As yesterday was the project’s first-stage meeting, it was only reviewed by a subcommittee of the EIA panel.
The park was given 10 days to submit the additional information, which must include proposals on water sources for the future park expansion and an accurate estimate of annual volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, the subcommittee said.
Environmental groups present at the meeting also voiced their concerns about the project.
“According to the proposal, upon the completion of the expansion, 160,000 tonnes of water would be needed at the park every day. However, water resources are already scarce in central Taiwan,” Taiwan Envrionmental Protection Union Changhua branch director Shih Yue-ying (施月英) said.
Citing statistics from the Taiwan Water Corporation, Shih said that as 98 percent of tap water in Changhua County comes from underground sources, the massive increase in water consumption could lead to ground collapse or subsidence.
She requested that the proposal be subject to a second round of EIA evaluation.
An EIA panelist said that “the proposal does not carefully review the expansion’s impact on nearby farms and water resources, nor does it evaluate the effects of wastewater on oceanic life.”
Another panelist criticized the estimate of VOC emission as “fraudulent.”
“At the previous meeting, we complained about the 1,600-tonne annual VOC emission, but in this edition of the proposal, the emission has somehow dropped to 1,100 tonnes. How is this possible?” the panelist said.
The panel also requested that the park propose a plan to compensate farmers whose land would be expropriated for the expansion.
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