《TAIPEI TIMES 焦點》 Guansi residents protest mining

DISASTER IN THE MAKING: One resident said 280m-tall piles of rocks from mining posed a landslide risk, with residents fearing the town would end up like Siaolin

By Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter

請繼續往下閱讀...

Residents of Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township （關西） yesterday rallied in front of the Executive Yuan in Taipei to protest a plan to resume operations at a quarry in the township, saying decades of mining had depleted the environment, and demanding that the Cabinet amend mining laws.

Dozens of residents, joined by environmentalists and lawmakers, braved the sun and protested a plan by Asia Cement Co to reopen a quarry in the township.

Asia Cement ran the quarry for 43 years until 2013, one year before the government banned mining in western Taiwan in 2014, but the Hsinchu County Government lifted the ban in 2013.

Asia Cement and two individuals, Lo Ching-jen （羅慶仁） and Lo Ching-chiang （羅慶江）, last year filed three proposals covering separate mining areas totaling 81.57 hectares, which was the first attempt to resume mining operations in western Taiwan, sparking protests from residents.

The Environmental Protection Administration’s Environmental Impact Assessment Committee decided that the three proposals should be considered as a whole and undergo second-phase reviews, in which more stringent requirements apply.

However, just before the decision was to be formally adopted, Asia Cement withdrew its application, and the other two applicants voluntarily reduced planned mining areas to 46.9 hectares in an apparent bid to avoid the second-phase reviews, as all development larger than 50 hectares is legally required to undergo a second-phase assessment.

Following the miners’ actions, the committee restarted first-phase reviews, which environmentalists said was due to former administration minister Wei Kuo-yen’s （魏國彥） intervention.

The first meeting of the new round of reviews was scheduled to begin yesterday, and protesters urged the government to revise the environmental review system to prevent miners from exploiting the system.

They also called for an overhaul of the Mining Act （礦業法）, which they said lacks clear criteria for mining deregulation and does not include public participation.

“What are the criteria for establishing and abolishing mineral reserves? Did the Hsinchu County Government lift the mining ban just because it wanted to?” Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association secretary-general Hsieh Meng-yu （謝孟羽） said.

“Residents were kept in the dark about the mining plans until the administration was to review them. They were excluded from the decisionmaking process and were not even given a chance to express their opinions,” Hsieh said.

The mining area is 300m from local communities, with blasting and highly alkaline mining debris contaminating the environment, but Asia Cement did nothing to remove the debris after operations ended, resident Lo Cheng-hung （羅政宏） said.

“Residents collect rainwater to cook, because water [from other sources] is unsafe,” Lo said.

“Waste rocks were piled up to 280m high and left abandoned. We are worried that the township will become another Siaolin Village （小林） [in Kaohsiung, which was destroyed by massive landslides caused by Typhoon Morakot in 2009],” Lo said.

The nation’s cement market is oversupplied, and 25 percent of cement produced in 2014 was exported, suggesting mining should be reduced, Citizens of the Earth researcher Pan Cheng-cheng （潘正正） said.

The demonstrators called on the government to extend administration Minister Lee Ying-yuan’s （李應元） pledge to phase out mining in national parks to other sensitive areas.

In response, a Bureau of Mines official said mining development is necessary, as the nation uses 15 million tonnes of cement every year, but he was noncommittal about the oversupply issue.

The official said the bureau would cooperate with the administration to draft an overall development plan for the nation’s cement industry by the end of this year.

新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES