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Solar power closes in on Chenglong Wetland; high rents undermine villagers' faith in the revitalization of Chenglong Village?

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Solar power closes in on Chenglong Wetland 03"High rents sway hearts; how can villagers believe again that one day the wetland can revitalize Chenglong Village?

(Continued from previous article) The residents of the Chenglong community had finally begun to gradually build a shared vision of coexisting and prospering with the wetland, but in recent years solar power projects have been developed one after another around the village, and people's hearts have begun to waver. "There's no way around it, it's profitable, so everyone rushes after it," said Tian Rizheng, an elder of the community, describing the wait-and-see mood among the villagers.

Ever since the Council of Agriculture announced in 2015 that the two zones around Chenglong Wetland belonged to "unfavorable farming areas" open to solar power development, the Chenglong community and the Guanshu Foundation had persistently petitioned the Council of Agriculture, and in 2018 succeeded in excluding part of the land around Chenglong Wetland from the "unfavorable farming areas" where solar power could be installed. This made some villagers who hoped to develop solar power believe that wetland conservation advocates were obstructing things from within, causing solar power to be unable to develop. Growing suspicion gradually opened cracks in what had once been a united village.

A ground-mounted solar power project has already been developed behind Chenglong Elementary School. (Provided by conservation advocates)

Hearts waver as high solar rents challenge the vision of wetland conservation

Currently, on the north side of Provincial Highway 61, around the wetland, soil is being filled and posts erected to build rooftop-type fishery-solar co-existence projects, and ground-mounted solar panels are also being installed one after another on the north side of Chenglong Elementary School. Land brokers are becoming increasingly active locally, persuading landowners to lease their land to solar power companies; on the other hand, other community cadres are still actively urging landowners who are watching and waiting not to lease their land for solar power, but instead to receive the wetland's ecological compensation. The two development paths are competing with each other, and some people even directly state their support for solar power development at public meetings, faintly creating a gunpowder smell of rivalry with the community cadres who support wetland conservation.

Villagers know that after turning their land over to solar power, they can obtain rents far higher than the wetland's ecological compensation. "Hearts change slowly, but decline comes quickly," Tian Rizheng said, adding that real-world development is hard to defy human nature.

"Back when Chenglong Wetland was not yet famous, some people would come to the wetland to dump waste illegally. In less than three minutes after his truck bed was raised, our community had to mobilize everyone to clean up for an entire afternoon." He recalled how the community had protected the wetland all along the way; although it was very hard, everyone was happy to do it.

Tian Rizheng said with emotion, "Some people wanted to build a leather factory here, some wanted to build a crematorium, and we blocked them all. Now that solar power has opened a breach, if more and more development that does not fit conservation purposes appears in the future, Chenglong Wetland will lose its original value."

What discouraged Tian Rizheng was that in the past it was private development behavior threatening the wetland, but now it is government policy: with one broad stroke of designating an "unfavorable farming area," abandoned land can be used for solar power. And the argument he had once promoted everywhere to villagers to join ecological compensation, that "this wetland will make our village better," he did not know whether it could still win people's hearts back.

Villagers who believed in the vision of wetland conservation built a wooden bridge together with their own hands, but the intrusion of solar power has set hearts adrift. (Provided by Tian Rizheng)

Council of Agriculture: "Permitted use" falls under the authority of local governments

For the fishery-solar co-existence project currently under construction, the company has shown goodwill and is willing to communicate with wetland conservation advocates, but the solar power threat is not limited to this. How many more development applications nearby are still pending? This has become a question that the Chenglong community and conservation advocates are eager to understand. But this question has not been accurately answered from the local level to the central level.

The Council of Agriculture designated 38 "unfavorable farming areas" across Taiwan where solar power can be installed, among which Zones 11 and 12 (hereinafter referred to as Zone A and Zone B) are located at Chenglong Wetland. In 2018, after petitions by the Chenglong community and the Guanshu Foundation, the Council of Agriculture removed Zone A and reduced the scope of Zone B.

The official document by which the Council of Agriculture announced the removal of Zone A at the time included a proviso: to protect the rights and interests of operators who had applied legally, from the announcement date (March 16) until the effective date of May 15, cases applying to develop ground-mounted solar power under the "unfavorable farming areas" could still be accepted by the county government.

According to a Council of Agriculture press release, before the announcement deadline, no operator in Zone A had applied to develop under the "unfavorable farming areas." However, when a reporter recently asked the Council of Agriculture, the answer was not so certain. Wang Yuzhen, deputy director of the Planning Division, said that when the dispute over the designation of Zone A first arose, there were indeed some old cases awaiting handling.

Wang Yuzhen pointed out that the main reason for removing Zone A was that aquaculture operators in the area petitioned, and it was removed to preserve the area's production and aquaculture function, not entirely for reasons of conserving Chenglong Wetland. If an operator submitted an application to the county government before the effective date of the removal announcement, then based on the "principle of legitimate expectation," the operator's legal right to apply for development must be protected.

The solar power project on the north side of the wetland in Zone A that is at the center of the recent controversy is not ground-mounted solar power, but rather a rooftop-type fishery-solar co-existence project developed under the name of an agricultural facility "permitted use permit." Wang Yuzhen explained that the operator first applies for a permitted use permit, and "only after there is an aquaculture fact can green energy facilities be combined with it." And "permitted use" is directly authorized for review by the county government.

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