PROPOSED CHANGES TO EIA REQUIREMENTS

01/01/2005

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The Environmental Protection Administration recently published certain proposed amendments to the Standards for Determining the Detailed Content and Scope of Development Activities Subject to Environmental Impact Assessments. The main points of the amendments are as fol-lows:

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) re-quired for all fishing port developments

The Fishing Port Act divides fishing ports into four categories: Category 1, those intended for national use or to facilitate special fisheries development needs; Category 2, those intended for special municipality use; Category 3, those intended for county or city use; and Category 4, those located in remote areas.

Under the current provisions, an EIA is required only for development of fishing ports in Categories 1 and 2. The proposed amend-ments will extend this requirement to all four categories.

New EIA requirements for gravel extraction

The proposed amendments introduce the requirement for an EIA for the following soil, sand and gravel extraction activities:

1.Extraction above a certain scale on non-slopeland in a water resource quality and quantity protection zone.

2.Extraction from the seabed over an area of 10 hectares or more, or with an extraction volume of 100,000 cubic meters or more.

Urban renewal

Under proposed new provisions, with the consent of the local environmental protection authority and of the competent authorities for the relevant economic sectors, an urban renewal project in an old urban area located within a national park, or within a water re-source quality and quantity protection zone, may be exempted from the EIA requirement if the project covers an area of less than one hectare, or involves the residences of less than 100 households or of less than 500 persons.

Where it is proposed to newly build or to ex-pand an incinerator plant for general waste or general industrial wastes, or a facility for the intermediate treatment or final disposal of hazardous industrial wastes, if treatment is to be by incineration, then a calculation should be made of the waste treatment capacity of the proposed facility and of existing incineration facilities within one horizontal kilometer of the proposed facility. If the sum of their capacities exceeds a certain level, an EIA will be required.