Proposed environmental monitoring for alterations to the Suhua Highway improvement project by the Environmental Protection Administration’s (EPA) environmental impact assessment committee is being ignored by the agency, civic organizations said yesterday.
Tsai Chung-yueh (蔡中岳), director of the Hualien and Taitung offices of Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan, said the establishment of an environmental monitoring group to oversee the construction process was among the preconditions in the committee’s conclusions.
Two major problems were identified in the negotiations with the Directorate-General of Highways (DGH), the project developer, said Tseng Yu-han (曾雨涵), a research fellow at Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan.
Photo: Lo Pei-Der, Taipei Times
Members of the monitoring group were assembled by the DGH.
“The first is the imbalance in representatives in the monitoring group, having only two civic representatives among its 17 members,” Tseng said.
“The second is the monitoring mechanism losing its oversight function and downgrade to an endorsement role,” Tseng said, adding that the DGH held meetings with the monitoring group only once every three months.
The Suhua Highway improvement project obtained conditional approval from the environmental impact assessment committee on Nov. 1, 2010.
Thousand Mile Trail Club chairperson Chou Sheng-hsin (周聖心) said the monitoring group’s meetings were closed-door sessions.
Liao Mei-ju (廖美菊), a member of the monitoring group, yesterday said she had not been informed of the assessment meetings, and when she and another member, Lin Ruei-mu (林瑞木), appealed to the EPA and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications for permission to participate in the review process, they were refused.
Taiwan Ecological Engineering Development Foundation chairman and former Chunghwa Telecom chairman Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) said vice president-elect Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) had said the project was a “model” construction project when he was premier, but there has been a neglect in communication during the construction process and the proposed alteration plan has not been explained in detail.
“We expect the ‘model’ project to have high quality in both the planning and construction,” Hochen said.
Suhua Improvement Engineering Office Director Shau How-jei (邵厚潔) said the proposed alteration plan this time would have less of an impact on the local environment.
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