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Kuokuang refinery is
not welcome in Kaohsiung: official
By Shih Hsiu-chuan / Staff Reporter
Greater Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chiu (陳菊) is seeking to meet with Minister of
Economic Affairs Shih Yen-hsiang (施顏祥) over an unconfirmed government plan to
have a controversial Kuokuang Petrochemical Technology Co (國光石化) plant
established in the city, an official said yesterday.
“We [the Greater Kaohsiung government] do not welcome the Kuokuang Petrochemical
plant. To build an oil refinery does not fit with the direction in which the
city has been moving over the years, which is to develop an environment-friendly
city with green and clean industries,” the city’s Information Bureau
-director--general Lai Jui-lung (賴瑞隆) said by telephone.
Lai said the city government was not consulted by the ministry before a media
report disclosed that Beishan Village (北汕) in Linyuan District (林園) was being
considered as an alternative location for the project that has aroused concerns
over its environmental impact on wetlands along the coast of Dacheng Township
(大城) in Changhua County.
It would be unfair if the Kuokuang project were moved to Kaohsiung as this city
“has taken too much of the brunt of the country’s development in the past,” Lai
said, referring to the city being developed as a center for heavy and
petrochemical industries.
“The development of heavy industry made Greater Kaohsiung one of the world’s
highest polluters in terms of carbon dioxide emissions per capita,” Lai said.
Lai said the central government should not force the city to go back to its ways
when the former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration and former city
mayor Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) were in power, as that would counteract its efforts in
recent years to develop a low-carbon and sustainable metropolis.
If the government decided to move the Kuokuang project to Greater Kaohsiung, it
would only prove the truth of the allegation that the KMT has been “favoring the
north over the south,” Lai said.
Lai dismissed a media report that quoted an anonymous source as saying that
residents in Beishan Village planned to appeal to the Executive Yuan to welcome
the Kuokuang project on the condition the government relocate the village and
its neighboring villages.
“Our understanding is that residents there are opposed to the Kuokuang project,”
Lai said.
The Environmental Protection Administration has scheduled a meeting on Thursday
for its environmental impact assessment (EIA) committee to review the
environmental impacts of the project on the Dacheng Township site. The project
has failed to pass EIAs in the previous four meetings over the past five years,
the latest one being on Jan. 27.
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