Taipei taps may go dry twice a week

Taipei City may toughen water restrictions as early as next Tuesday, implementing a twice-a-week rationing scheme, city officials said yesterday.

Like current measures, water services would be suspended for 24 hours to parts of the city in rotation. But instead of five water districts, Taipei would be carved into three, each experiencing a shut-off twice a week.

"The anti-drought task force has reached a decision to continue with the current once-every-five-day measure until this coming Monday," city spokesman Wu Yu-sheng (吳育昇) said yesterday. "A tighter water-rationing regime will be put in place if insufficient rainfall doesn't come by then."

The first district would be shut off on Monday and Thursday. District two would be cut off every Tuesday and Friday. Residents in district three would get their turn on Wednesday and Saturday.

On Sunday, residents will have access to water city-wide.

"The new, twice-a-week measure is the strictest within the water-rationing scheme," Ou Chin-der (歐晉德), deputy mayor, said yesterday. "Once implemented, it will only be called off after the drought has ended."

The suspension in services would at start at 4am and last until 4am the next day, Hsu Pei-chung (許培中), deputy director at the Taipei Water Department, said yesterday.

"Mayor Ma is especially concerned about hygiene issues if the stricter water-rationing measure is carried out," Wu said. "If the plan is implemented, we'll also carry out periodic inspections at places such as restaurants, food stands and the like to ensure that sanitary conditions are not neglected."

As of last night, the water level at the Feitsui Reservoir (翡翠水庫) -- the city's main source of water -- was 125.51m, or roughly 15m above "dead storage" level, the point below which water must be pumped out of the reservoir.