Taiwan Church News
3408 Edition
19 – 25 June, 2017
Topical News
Under Environmental Groups’ Protest, FPC Sixth Naphtha Cracker Is Still Granted Two Years’ Extension For Coal-Fired Boilers
Reported by Simon Lin
Breaching his solemn campaign promise, once elected all coal-fired boilers in Formosa Petroleum Corp(FPC) Sixth Naphtha Cracker will be banned to improve the long-polluted air quality, Yunlin County Magistrate Mr Lee Chin-yung approved to grant an outrageous 2-year extension to all 13 coal-fired boilers of FPC on June 12, 2017, based on reasons that a legal ban on any coal-fired machinery permit is beyond local government’s authority and it’s government’s duty to maintain stable a cross-island electricity supply.
On June 10, an anti-air pollution demonstration, organized by Air Clean Taiwan, Yunlin Physician Association and many other civic groups, asking Yulin County Government to withhold issuing coal-fired boiler permit to FPC, was held at Douliou City of Yulin County. In the street march of Douliou City, Yunlin County was shown with statistics as the most hazardous county in Taiwan, with the highest level of PM2.5; and the county with the highest death rate with cancers if PM2.5 could be classified as one among the lethal factors leading to cancers.
Mr Chang Tze-jian, an avowed Christian and chairman of Yunlin Branch of Taiwan Environmental Protection Union, expressed his strong critiques questioning Magistrate Lee’s extension granted to FPC as being short of social justice. Why financial conglomerates and the rich northern Taiwan could keep exploiting the land and the marginalized people in central and southern Taiwan, Chang bombarded, adding that there is not even a tiny sense of transitional justice in urgent environmental issues even though Tsai administration promised a lot during her presidential campaign.
Translated by Peter Wolfe
