Science Park Phase 3 development appeal rejected

Yesterday the Supreme Administrative Court rejected the government's appeal against the July 30th ruling to suspend work on the Central Taiwan Science Park's (CTSP) Phase 3 development project.

The environmental impact assessment (EIA) for the project was ruled invalid by the Supreme Administrative Court on the 22 January this year. The Environmental Protection Administration, CTSP and developers ignored the ruling. Then, on July 30th the Taipei High Administrative Court again ruled against further development on the site, on the grounds that the National Science Council had not completed a comprehensive health risk assessment. The government's response to this was to question the ability of the judges and undermine the authority of the judiciary. Then, institute an appeal. But even before the court's had ruled on the appeal, EPA's Environmental Impact Assessment committee instead of sending the Phase-3 development project to a second round of review, chose to ignore the courts and gave conditional approval on Tuesday (2010-08-31) for the Phase 3 development of the CTSP at Cising and Houli to go ahead.

The ruling stopping work at the CTSP Phase 4 development (Kuokuang Petrochemical) in Erlin, Changhua County was revoked. The suspension of Phase 4 will now be up to the Taipei High Administrative Court.

See Science park's appeal rejected, Learning the lessons of Mailiao for Dacheng and Quantifying the non-quantifiable in today's Taipei Times.

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