After the upgrade of Taoyuan into a special municipality, the scope, volume, and staff numbers of the Department of Environmental Protection of Taoyuan City (TYDEP) has increased, therefore some of the TYDEP’s units could only rent offices outside the city hall. The city administrative team renovated the hall of the old judiciary campus into the “Environmental Protection Administrative Campus”, with a plan to station the TYDEP and the Environmental Maintenance and Inspection Division. The old Judiciary Campus covered an area of about 1.6 hectares, which used to be the offices of the Taiwan Taoyuan District Court and the Taiwan Taoyuan District Prosecutor’s Office. The TYDEP moved to the new location not only to integrate the administrative park but also to enhance the convenience of the public. During the opening ceremony today (19), Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan pointed out that the Environmental Protection Administrative Campus will not only enable the revitalization of idle space, but also alleviate the lack of office space for the city government. In the future, the city government will present a new look with revitalized halls and improved administrative efficiency to provide diversified and quality services.
Mayor Cheng also said that the original Judiciary Campus was mainly designed as an investigative and judicial campus with a more solemn and authoritative style, and it is necessary to make some changes after the administrative agencies move in. The city government team worked together to implement a series of renovations, including removing the existing walls to make the campus brighter, more open and friendly, adding YouBike stations, reorganizing the sidewalks in a “people-oriented” manner, preserving the old trees in the campus, planning two small parks for the public to relax, and adding a public service area at the entrance of the building hall to create a more comfortable environment for the public to access city services.
Director-General Lu of the TYDEP said that as an important driver of the implementation of the circular economy and the promotion of low-carbon cities, the relocation of the Judiciary Campus left behind a lot of usable furniture. In order to extend the service life of furniture, through the Inspection Division set up by the Tao Zai Yuan Repair and Recovery Station, the team members fully embodied the spirit of professionalism to repair and give new life to old objects, the realization of waste reduction and resource recycling, not only to implement the source of waste reduction, but also to demonstrate the environmental protection cherishing resources.
Director-General Lu noted that there are tens of thousands of factories in Taoyuan City, with a heavy toll in terms of pollution. Furthermore, the population of Taoyuan City continues to rise after the upgrade of the city into a special municipality, coupled with the rising awareness of the environment and the public’s increasing demand for environmental quality. In order to strengthen the effectiveness of pollution early warning systems, the new office building features a round-the-clock environmental pollution monitoring center. Through 24-hour staff monitoring, in the event of environmental abnormalities or pollution, the monitoring center shall dispatch an inspection team. The team is equipped with an inspection tablet app and inspection control information system, and manages the inspection affairs in a comprehensive digitalized approach to speed up the inspection of cases and stop the worsening of pollution.
Director-General Lu also emphasized that in response to the global trend of climate change and net-zero carbon emissions, renewable energy has become the mainstream source of electricity. In response to the nationwide green energy policy, the installation of solar photovoltaic equipment on the rooftop and ground of the Environmental Protection Administrative Campus will not only enhance the stability of Taoyuan’s power grid, but also help to solve the problem of peak electricity consumption. The installed capacity is about 1.4MWp, with an annual generation capacity of about 1.63 million kWh and a carbon emission reduction of about 831.6 metric tons. The all-new TYDEP Administrative Campus is expected to be completed early next year, and the TYDEP team, consisting of nearly 600 staff members, shall serve the public with even better administrative efficiency.