Residents Along the Donggang River and Environmental Groups Blast the Forward-Looking Infrastructure Plan's NT$250.7 Billion in Water Construction for Failing to Improve River Pollution

The Forward-Looking Infrastructure Plan has been fiercely debated in the Legislative Yuan, but reactions have not been limited to Taipei; doubts have also been voiced across southern Taiwan. Civic groups including the Blue Donggang River Conservation Association, the Meinong Love for Hometown Association, the Tainan Community University, and the Citizens of the Earth Foundation held a press conference and a full-day forum on May 15 to conduct in-depth discussion and review of the plan's contents.

These groups, which have long cared about water resources, question whether the NT$882.5 billion Forward-Looking Infrastructure Plan, having undergone neither careful planning nor sufficient discussion, should be introduced in the form of a special act and forced through. Taking the "water environment" as an example, the Fengshan Reservoir, which serves as a backup water supply for Kaohsiung City, draws from the Donggang River, a waterway severely polluted by livestock wastewater, yet the water environment construction plan allocates as much as NT$250.7 billion without any concrete proposal to improve river pollution. In response, the groups jointly called on the government to make "improving river water quality" its primary goal, because only by returning clean water sources to all citizens can it truly be called forward-looking!