The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) has approved an environmental impact assessment for a project to build a third runway at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport.
An EPA committee meeting on March 25 approved the assessment after the airport’s operator, Taoyuan International Airport Corp, promised to bolster disaster prevention and control measures, and hold one aircraft rescue or firefighting drill every year, as the planned runway is close to an oil storage facility operated by CPC Corp, Taiwan.
The airport company also promised to conserve more than 1,000 trees in the project area by transplanting them to a different location when construction starts and returning them to the site later.
However, several environmental protection groups issued a joint statement saying that the committee passed the project without conducting a thorough assessment of risks posed by the oil depot or relocation fees for land expropriation.
It is estimated that 2,599 hectares of land would have to be expropriated for the project and an estimated 6,190 households with more than 16,000 residents would be forced to relocate, the statement said.
The groups said they do not rule out filing an appeal to seek an administrative remedy.
The company said that the project is part of the airport’s efforts to expand its facilities and upgrade its services in accordance with the government’s Taoyuan Aerotropolis project and its goal to boost the local economy.
As the airport is the nation’s main gateway, there is an urgent need for a third runway, it said.
Once a third runway is built in the airport’s north, the runway in the south would be used less frequently, reducing air and noise pollution in the area, the company said.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS