|
Re-evaluate Kuokuang’s Changhua County
plan
By Winston Dang 陳重信
In late 2007 and early 2008, during my term as minister of the Environmental
Protection Administration (EPA), two major development projects, heavily
polluting and with high energy consumption, were planned at the sixth naphtha
cracker in Mailiao Township (麥寮), Yunlin County. Based on Article 8 of the
Environmental Impact Assessment Act (環境影響評估法), the EPA decided that the two
projects — Kuokuang Petrochemical Technology Co’s proposed eighth naphtha
cracker and Formosa Plastics Corp’s planned steel mill — both required a phase
two environmental impact assessment (EIA).
The main reason for the decision was that if the development were approved, the
resulting pollution would exceed the environmental carrying capacity, and the
developers could not come up with ways of adjusting the environmental cost by
reducing the pollution.
When reporting to then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), I said: “These two major
development projects, heavily polluting and with a high energy consumption, will
spew out black smoke together with the sixth naphtha cracker day in and day out.
How can that be a good thing?”
When Chen asked: “So what should we do?” I had no choice but to frankly say
that: “The best thing would be to re-evaluate the two projects; the best thing
would be not to build them at all.”
All the members of the EIA committee felt that there was a risk that the
projects would have a major impact on the environment and that we should go on
with a phase-two EIA.
The result was that the Kuokuang plant could not be built in Mailiao, and the
company instead proposed building it in Changhua County, at a 2,000 hectare
wetland close to Dacheng Township (大城). Should we really allow that area, now
almost free from pollution, to also be so polluted that it exceeds the
environmental carrying capacity? And what does environmental carrying capacity
mean? It is a so-called “environmental and health standard” setting a maximum
pollution value that we are supposed to accept just because it has been arrived
at by a lot of so-called “academics and experts” who consider themselves smart.
The question is if we should all be forced to just accept this maximum value?
Former associate administrator of the US’ Environmental Protection Agency Milton
Russell often says that many people think pollution emissions are unethical, but
that the question being asked is how much pollution is needed for it to be
considered unethical: Talking about what levels of pollution are acceptable is a
bit like talking about how many times a child can be sexually molested before it
is seen as immoral.
There are not many people who think there is no risk that the Kuokuang project
will have a major environmental impact. This is why there should only be two
possible outcomes of the assessment of the environmental impact of building a
plant at the Dacheng wetlands in Changhua: Moving on to a phase-two EIA in
strict accordance with Article 8 of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act, or
an all-out rejection and abandonment of the project. If the project is handled
in the same way as the EIA for the Suhua Freeway project, where the authorities
first set a timetable before “conditionally” accepting the EIA, that would smack
of political considerations. In addition, supervising the project in accordance
with the EIA after it has been approved would both increase the cost to society
and waste national resources, not to mention raising concerns about violating
the law. The academics and experts appointed by the EPA to sit on the EIA
committee should give careful consideration to the issue and follow the law.
Winston Dang is a former Environmental Protection
Administration minister.
|
