The 9th River Management Office held the first comprehensive meeting of the 2022 local advisory group today (30th), inviting members of the group and related units to learn about how the water environment projects under the Office's jurisdiction are running and to help integrate the opinions of local citizens to forge a consensus for inclusion in the project promotion.
The new local advisory group's term of office is from 2022 to 2023. The members of the Group include experts and scholars in the fields of water conservation, ecology, urban planning and environmental protection, members of local NGOs and representatives of the Hualien County Government. The meeting convener, Commissioner Ming-Chang Hsieh, distributed appointment letters to the members in attendance.
The topics of this meeting include Hualien County's "Hualien County Water Environment Improvement Spatial Development Plan," "Hualien County Drainage Area Drainage Suangan Drainage (including Dayu Drainage) Management Plan," "Phase III of the Wuwei River Drainage Management Project" and the "Siouguluan River's Mingli Levee Section No. 1 River Channel Improvement Project," "Overall Environmental Improvement Project for the Downstream Left and Right Bank Embankments under Fenglin River Highway Bridge" and "Mugua River Chuying No. 2 Embankment Section River Channel Treatment Project (Phase 2)" that the Office is scheduled to execute. In addition to proposing professional comments on amendments to the contents of the plan, the members also indicated the implementation of ecological inspection and public participation. The design not only focuses on the needs of local residents but also takes into account the safety of the flood-prevention work done on rivers and subsequent maintenance, preserving the natural appearance of the river as much as possible.
Commissioner Hsieh said that the various issues discussed at today's meeting would be promoted by the Office and the county government with reference to the valuable opinions of the committee members, and added that when communicating with the public about risks, the public should be guided to clearly understand that the goal of water management is not to stop flooding but to reduce the area of flooding or the duration of flooding. Currently, the ecological inspection of each project has been integrated into the project life cycle and post-completion phase, with the exception of the planning stage. In the future, 9th River Management Office will continue to promote public participation in the public works it manages and implement ecological inspection in order to achieve disaster prevention and ecological sustainability.