Recent media reports have said the riverbeds of the Gaoping River (高屏溪) and several reservoirs in central and southern Taiwan such as the Zengwun Reservoir (曾文水庫), the Nanhua Reservoir (南化水庫) and the Wushe Reservoir (霧社水庫) have accumulated huge amounts of gravel as a result of Typhoon Morakot and other typhoons and landslides over recent years.
Based on the average time it takes to dredge gravel, it is estimated that it will take decades or even centuries to clean out these reservoirs.
We do not have that much time to clean them out.
Ironically, while we have huge amounts of gravel accumulated in our rivers, we are also gradually losing the coastline in southwestern areas of Taiwan. Furthermore, the Waisanding Sand Bar (外傘頂洲) that has protected our southwest coast since ancient times is also shrinking. In the past, gravel that was swept into Taiwan’s western seawaters would be redistributed by offshore currents and gather on coastlines to continuously form reclaimed land.
Compared with the coastline that existed during the times of Koxinga (鄭成功), the coastline in southwestern Taiwan has been shrinking rapidly. Now, gravel excavation projects and the building of dams and sand barriers have decreased the amount of gravel that enters the Taiwan Strait. A further problem exists with shore-connected breakwaters on many coasts because of commercial development. It is really quite strange and dangerous for a place like Taiwan — where the speed at which the land rises and the extent of mountain erosion are among the highest in the world — to face coastal erosion.
Why do the assessments carried out by our authorities say it will take several decades or even centuries before they can dredge waterways that have been silted up so badly?
There are two main limitations causing this: First is the removal of the gravel itself and second are the bottlenecks posed by the loads machinery, trucks and roads can handle.
Removing gravel is relatively straightforward, but lack of funding and contracting procedures slow things down. These can be solved if the government is determined.
The problem of road and equipment loading is more troublesome. Gravel trucks cause a lot of complaints and no one wants batches of trucks rumbling around for years on end.
To solve these issues, I suggest that large numbers of conveyor belts be erected along riverbeds to transport gravel downstream. This would keep gravel trucks off long stretches of road and they would only have to perform a supporting role.
This would solve road load and disturbance problems. Also, the conveyor belts could operate 24 hours a day to speed up the removal process and they would cost less than trucks.
Finding somewhere to put the gravel would pose the biggest problem. News reports say the amount of dredged gravel caused by Typhoon Morakot is enough to meet market demand for 20 years. I therefore suggest that we take gravel that has no market value that cannot be stored and put it back on our coastlines.
We could stop the loss of Taiwan’s western coastline if we used conveyor belts to transport gravel along river channels downstream to estuaries that would haul it out to sea. This would allow longshore currents to take the gravel where it should naturally be.
Gong Shou-yeh is an associate curator of geology at the National Museum of Natural Science.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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