This article is published in Taiwan Today March 5, 2010
By June Tsai
The Supreme Administrative Court upheld a ruling Jan. 22 invalidating the environmental impact assessment which had allowed for the expansion of the Central Taiwan Science Park in Taichung County’s Houli Township.
The ruling put the developer, the National Science Council, in an awkward position, as construction had already begun after the initial conditional EIA approval. But after the court’s ruling was announced, work at the CTSP Houli branch was not stopped.
The failure to halt construction following the court’s decision angered environmental activists and legal experts alike. They called on the Environmental Protection Administration to order suspension of work in accordance with the Environmental Impact Assessment Act. The nation’s top environmental authority, however, said the project did not have to be stopped.
Outraged, activists and residents demonstrated outside the EPA office March 1. “We decided to take to the streets, since the government itself is not able to uphold social justice,” one protester said.
The controversy is snowballing amid concerns for environmental protection, health risks, access to technology and the democratic rule of law.
“The Supreme Administrative Court’s ruling is the most important event since Taiwan adopted the environmental impact assessment review system in 1994,” lawyer Lin San-chia said in a seminar Feb. 10.
The court decided that the EIA review procedure was defective in that citizens’ right to participation was largely ignored or prevented due to administrative misconduct, according to Lin.
“The ruling testified that the farmers were right,” said Lin, referring to the six farmers he represented, who in 2006 first raised the case that the environmental impact assessment procedure had not been properly done.
The Houli project was given a conditional pass in the phase-one assessment review in 2006. This allowed construction to begin, while sparing the developer the job of providing a report for phase-two impact assessment review, explained Liu Ru-huei, an assistant professor at Tamkang University’s Department of Public Administration.
According to Article 8 of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act, phase two is required for development projects when there is “concern of a significant impact on the environment.”
Environmental issues relating to the science-based industrial park have been the focus of disputes in the past few years. The CTSP currently has four sites in Taichung, Yunlin and Changhua counties, providing land and resources to major manufacturers, most notably AU Optronics Corp., one of the world’s leading thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal-display manufacturers.
The 246-hectare Houli park was expected to create 18,000 jobs. The government hoped the CTSP’s completion would help upgrade central Taiwan’s industry and, once integrated with the Hsinchu Science Park and Southern Taiwan Science Park, help reinforce Taiwan’s position as a major player in the world’s high-tech industry.
Residents, however, are worried about potential threats to health, both during the construction process and later operations, because of possible contamination of soil and underground water. They are also concerned about the distribution of water supplies and the project’s impact on agriculture in one of the country’s major food baskets.
Serious misgivings have arisen over how the opinions of people in the affected area have not been taken into consideration. The March 1 protest was not an isolated incident.
In October 2009 farmers and fishermen made headlines when they threw oyster shells in front of the EPA headquarters in protest against the conditional passing of the CTSP fourth-stage project in Erlin Township, Changhua County. Ground was broken at the Erlin site in December, despite months of futile attempts by residents to have their voices heard.
“The gist of phase-two impact assessment is public participation, allowing citizens to submit their opinions pertaining to a development plan,” Liu said. “The truth is that 70 percent of the country’s development plans never entered the second phase,” she added.
According to the ruling that annulled the Houli case, the EPA was “misusing its discretionary power” when it determined that there was “no concern of significant impact on citizen’s health” involved, and thus kept the project from entering the phase-two environmental impact assessment process.
In response to the court’s decree, the EPA declared that the phase-one review conclusion was based on the democratic principle of majority rule, with committee members voting 11 to 8 in favor of the project. “For the administrative court to overrule the conclusion threatens the independence of the EIA scrutiny system,” the agency stated Feb. 7.
To Thomas Chan, a lawyer who was on the EIA panel when the project was approved, this argument is flawed. “There is no such thing as ‘majority rule’ when the information required for the review of an environmental impact assessment is incomplete,” he said.
According to Chan, the NSC routinely rejected requests for information on chemicals the park companies use and assessment reports on their health risks and environmental impact, on the grounds that such information amounted to “business secrets.”
Chan pointed out that the only health risk expert on the panel, a National Taiwan University public health professor, had insisted on the necessity of going on to phase two. “His opinion was overruled by the majority and was even referred to by the EPA as ‘one panel member’s irrational insistence,’” he said.
“The public participation mechanism in the impact assessment act has been made a formality because in the end, a few members make the decisions that forestall public involvement,” Chan said.
He revealed that the makeup of the EIA committee results in a foregone conclusion, because if the seven government representatives are not counted, those who voted for further risk appraisal far outnumbered those who supported passing the EIA in phase one.
“The EPA gave in to the pressure of the investors’ development schedule,” he said.
For environmentalists, the court’s decision addresses the important issue of insufficient risk appraisal in science park development reports.
“High-tech corporations have access to information on the chemical components in their production processes that might have an impact on land and life, but they are reluctant to disclose such data,” said Echo Lin, secretary-general of the Taiwan Environmental Action Network.
“Instead, it becomes the burden of environmental groups and residents, who do not have such information, to provide evidence of the dangers of a development project,” she said. “But then their observations are considered unscientific and are ignored.”
“Public policies are supposed to promote public interest, but exactly who is to determine where public interest lies?” Hsu Shih-jung of National Chengchi University’s Department of Land Economics posed this radical question.
In Taiwan, Hsu said Feb. 12, that it has been the practice for a few experts and bureaucrats to make the final decision on development projects.
“Technocrats have behaved as if they possess objective, scientific knowledge and know what is good for the public, yet the unexpected but disastrous flooding during Typhoon Morakot, and other catastrophes, show that science is not always reliable.”
“Lay people also have knowledge based on their own experience,” Hsu said. “Their knowledge has to be taken into serious consideration if controversies are to be avoided, and more importantly, if decision-making is to really solve social problems and promote public interest in the long run.”
“When it comes to controversies over development,” he continued, “some claim their right to employment, others to life, and still others to land and property. Therefore, multiple channels for soliciting opinion should be built into the administrative process and strictly implemented, so as not to exclude anyone.”
Regarding the CTSP development plans, “Residents from affect areas were deprived of all opportunities for their opinions to be taken into consideration, and have to be called ‘violent’ and ‘irrational’ when they resort to protests, this is really pathetic,” the professor said.
The CTSP dispute in Houli remains unresolved, although the NSC said it would soon submit a health risk report as required by the EPA. Yet how the judicial ruling will be interpreted in the end concerns not only the country’s rule of law but also future protection of the environment.
“We won the law suit. But so what, since the executive branch paid it no heed?” asked Lin San-chia.
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