Taiwan Church News
3332 Edition
Jan 4 – 11, 2016
Headline News
CPC’s Fifth Naphtha Cracker Plant Closed In 2016 New Year Eve Countdown
Reported by Chen Yi-fan
In the midnight on 31st December 2015, when everyone in everywhere takes part in the 2016 new year eve countdown, there is also a very special assembly celebrating the closure of Chinese Petroleum Corporation(CPC) fifth naphtha cracker plant located at the Houjing area of Nanzih District of Kaohsiung City. This significant closure is finally achieved after a 28 years’ environmental protests and the long-time anticipation by all local Houjing residents and some resilient ecological activists.
Organized by Taiwan’s Citizen of the Earth and Houjing Social Welfare Foundation, this thanksgiving and new year eve countdown assembly is jubilantly celebrated before the Fong-ping Temple. Many local inhabitants, scholars, students and representatives of the citizen groups are very excited to witness this historical closure of CPC’s fifth naphtha cracker plant, looking forward to a brand new era for Houjing during the 2016 new year eve countdown.
In 1987, CPC announced to build its fifth naphtha cracker plant in Houjing. Though a lot of environmental protests and even plebiscites were held by local residents, the plant was finished among the sounds and furies in 1990. As the plant was still confronting waves of protests after its operation in 1990, Mr Hao Bo-cun, Taiwan’s prime minister then, promised that the fifth naphtha cracker plant will be shut down and removed to other location after 25 years’ operation. When 2015 comes to an end, the two big chimney of the fifth naphtha cracker plant stops their fuming, it means the Houjing people is finally liberated from a quarter of century’s environmental nightmare!
Professor Shih Shin-min, a renown environmental and chemical scholar in National Taiwan University, remarks that the significance of Houjing anti-fifth-naphtha-cracker-plant movement is not a local self-help environmental event only, in fact it is a precursor of many environmental protests afterwards. In the meantime, it is the first example of local plebiscite in Taiwan history.
Many important quests are also invited to participate this special assembly, including Mayor of Kaohsiung City, Ms Chen Chu, and Kaohsiung City Council Speaker, Mrs Kan Yu-cheng.
Translated by Peter Wolfe
