A planned third liquefied natural gas terminal project in Taoyuan was yesterday rejected by the Environmental Protection Administration’s (EPA) environmental impact assessment (EIA) committee, even though high-ranking Ministry of Economic Affairs officials stressed its urgency.
A meeting was held to review the terminal construction project off the coast of Datan Borough (大潭) in Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音) proposed by state-run CPC Corp, Taiwan.
While the project was in 2000 approved by the EPA, the utility in June last year proposed a modified development plan, which has undergone four EIA committee reviews and four meetings with experts.
Over the past year, CPC has been required to submit more documentation about ecological surveys and risk management, while environmentalists have presented findings about wildlife near the project site.
Academia Sinica biodiversity researcher Allen Chen (陳昭倫) and other researchers on Monday announced the discovery of endangered scalloped hammerhead sharks on the coast, following their discovery of protected Polycyathus chaishanensis coral last year.
The Taoyuan Local Union and other groups at a news conference in front of the EPA before the meeting started at 9:30am said that the project would inevitably affect local ecosystems and demanded that the utility scrap the project.
Nearly 60 members of the Taiwan Petroleum Workers’ Union rallied next to them, saying that they voluntarily came to express their support for the project and that the union would push CPC to realize its promise to minimize the project’s environmental impact.
The utility has decided to reduce the project’s development area from 232 to 37 hectares and not to build an incinerator and a storage area for petrochemical products, CPC vice president J.Z. Fang (方振仁) said during the meeting.
Building the terminal in New Taipei City’s Port of Taipei (台北港), as suggested by some environmentalists, would require 15 more years and delay the terminal’s gas supply to the Datan Power Plant, originally planned to begin in 2022, Fang added.
The project would not be conducted by CPC alone — the ministry would back its promise, Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Tseng Wen-sheng (曾文生) said.
CPC chairperson Tai Chein (戴謙) also attended the meeting for the first time, promising that the company would avoid affecting protected wildlife while building the terminal.
However, many committee members said that the utility’s ecological documentation was still insufficient when compared with that presented by environmentalists, and that it failed to convince them that Datan is the only possible venue.
After the more than five-hour meeting, the committee decided to return the project to the ministry, the utility’s supervisor, but the decision must be confirmed by the EIA grand assembly.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
The Chinese military has boosted its capability to fight at a high tempo using the element of surprise and new technology, the Ministry of National Defense said in the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) published on Monday last week. The ministry highlighted Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) developments showing significant changes in Beijing’s strategy for war on Taiwan. The PLA has made significant headway in building capabilities for all-weather, multi-domain intelligence, surveillance, operational control and a joint air-sea blockade against Taiwan’s lines of communication, it said. The PLA has also improved its capabilities in direct amphibious assault operations aimed at seizing strategically important beaches,
RSS