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Photovoltaics Close In on Chenglong Wetland 03"Development interests incite people's hearts; how can villagers believe again that one day the wetland can revitalize Chenglong Village?

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Photovoltaics Close In on Chenglong Wetland 03"Development interests incite people's hearts; how can villagers believe again that one day the wetland can revitalize Chenglong Village?

(Continued from previous article) The Chenglong community residents had finally gradually built up a vision of coexisting and prospering together with the wetland, but in recent years photovoltaic sites have appeared one after another around the village, and people's hearts began to waver. "There's no way, it's profitable, so everyone rushes to it," said community elder Tian Rizheng, describing the wait-and-see mood among the villagers.

Since the Council of Agriculture announced in 2015 that the two zones around Chenglong Wetland belonged to "unfavorable farming areas" open for photovoltaic development, the Chenglong community and the Guanshu Foundation had continuously petitioned the Council of Agriculture, and in 2018 succeeded in excluding part of the land around Chenglong Wetland from the "unfavorable farming areas" where photovoltaics could be installed. This matter caused some villagers who hoped to develop photovoltaics to believe that wetland conservationists were obstructing them, preventing photovoltaic development. Growing suspicion gradually opened cracks in what had been a united village.

A ground-mounted photovoltaic site has already been developed behind Chenglong Elementary School. (Provided by conservationists)

Hearts waver as high photovoltaic rents challenge the wetland conservation vision

Currently, around the wetland on the north side of Provincial Highway 61, land is being filled and posts erected to build a rooftop-type fishery-photovoltaic symbiosis site, and ground-mounted photovoltaic panels are also being installed one after another on the north side of Chenglong Elementary School. Land brokers are becoming increasingly active in the area, persuading landowners to rent their land to photovoltaic companies; on the other hand, other community cadres are still actively urging the landowners who are watching and waiting not to rent out their land for photovoltaics, but instead to receive the wetland's ecological compensation. The two development paths are competing with each other, and some people even openly stated at public meetings that they supported photovoltaic development, faintly creating a whiff of gunpowder as they began to square off against the community cadres devoted to wetland conservation.

The villagers know that if they use their land for photovoltaics, they can obtain rents far higher than the wetland's ecological compensation. "Hearts change slowly, but to sink into decline is fast," Tian Rizheng said, noting 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. It took less than three minutes for them to raise their truck bed, but our community had to mobilize everyone to clean up for a whole afternoon." He recalled how the community had protected the wetland all along; though it was hard, everyone was happy to do it.

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

What disheartened Tian Rizheng was that in the past it was private development behavior that threatened the wetland, but now it is government policy: with one broad stroke designating "unfavorable farming areas," abandoned land can be used for photovoltaics. And the line he used to promote everywhere urging villagers to join the ecological compensation, "This wetland will make our village better," he no longer knew whether it could win people's hearts back.

Villagers who believed in the wetland conservation vision worked together with their own hands to build a wooden bridge, but the intrusion of photovoltaics has set people's hearts adrift. (Provided by Tian Rizheng)

Council of Agriculture: "Permitted use" falls under local government authority

For the fishery-photovoltaic symbiosis site currently under construction, the company has released goodwill and is willing to communicate with wetland conservationists, but the photovoltaic threat is not limited to this. Exactly how many development applications are still pending nearby? This has become a question the Chenglong community and conservationists are eager to understand. But this question could not be answered accurately from the local level to the central level.

The Council of Agriculture designated 38 "unfavorable farming areas" across Taiwan where photovoltaics could 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.

At the time, the Council of Agriculture's official document announcing the removal of Zone A 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 photovoltaics under the "unfavorable farming area" designation 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 area" designation. However, when reporters 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 a petition from aquaculture operators in the area, in order to preserve the area's aquaculture production function, and not entirely for Chenglong Wetland conservation reasons. 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 photovoltaic site on the north side of the wetland in Zone A, which has recently been disputed, is not ground-mounted photovoltaics, but rather a rooftop-type fishery-photovoltaic symbiosis developed under the name of an agricultural facility "permitted use permit." Wang Yuzhen explained that operators first apply for a permitted use permit, and "only after there is an actual aquaculture operation can green energy facilities be combined with it." And "permitted use" is directly authorized to the county government for review.

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