Taiwan Water Supply Corp (台灣自來水公司) said there will be no water shortages in the greater Tainan area by May next year, ensuring that electronics companies have enough water for their operations.
With water levels at the Tsengwen Reservoir (曾文水庫) in Tainan County falling, Taiwan Water said it will re-route 200,000 tonnes a day to Tainan Science-based Industrial Park (台南科學園區), and 20,000 tonnes to Tainan Technology Industrial Park (台南科技工業區), from the nearby Nanhua Reservoir (南化水庫).
No water restrictions will be applied to high-production-value industries such as integrated circuit and TFT-LCD industries in these two Tainan industrial parks, said Chou Sheng-hua (
But the company still expects the industries in the south to be effected if dry weather continues into May of next year, Chou said.
Tsengwen is one of southern Taiwan's major reservoirs. With insufficient rainfall this summer, the reservoir has cut its supplies for agriculture from 80 percent to 50 percent of its resources.
The company may also channel in a daily supply of 350,000 tonnes of water from the nearby Nanhua Reservoir (南化水庫), 200,000 tonnes from the Wushantou Reservoir (烏山頭水庫), and 100,000 tonnes from the Tanting Water Purification Plant (潭頂淨水廠) for residential uses, Chou said.
Chou made the remarks after Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yi-fu visited both Nanhua and Tsengwen reservoirs on Saturday. The ministry will hold meetings every two weeks to assess water supplies in the region, he said.
Taiwan's largest companies, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), opened factories in the Tainan Science-based Industrial Park after a similar park in the north ran out of land for expansion. The companies also had to truck in water to their factories in the north earlier this year after a drought forced water supplies to be cut.
The water level at the Nanhua Reservoir was around 175.21m mark on Saturday, or more than 83 percent of its effective capacity. With about 112.51 million tonnes of water stored at the reservoir, it is capable of pumping out about 500,000 tonnes of water per day.
While reservoirs in the south have only around 60 percent of the water they had at the same time last year, the water shortage problems will only affect the agricultural sector, Water Resources Agency Director Hwang Jing-san (
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