Tropical Storm Nangka, which will leave Taiwan today, was expected to do little to ease the threat of drought in northern Taiwan, the Water Resources Agency (WRA) said yesterday.
Nangka, just off southern and eastern counties yesterday, was expected to pass Taiwan today as it moves northeast, Central Weather Bureau officials said.
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
"The impending drought in the north, however, remains a threat because little rainfall will be brought by Nangka," WRA Deputy Director Chen Shen-hsien (
In order to limit consumption, water pressure in northern counties, including Hsinchu, Taoyuan and Taipei, is still being reduced at night.
Chen said heavier water consumption due to the spread of SARS over the past two months has increased demands on the Shihmen Dam in Taoyuan County and the Feitsui Reservoir in Taipei County.
Chen said that the water supply for the north could be sustained until the end of the month because the storage level is 100 million cubic meters more than at the same time last year.
Facing the worst drought in the past two decades, Taipei City adopted water restrictions on May 13 last year.
Chen said a meeting by the Ministry of Economic Affairs about handling the impending water shortage will be held on June 17 to review rainfall this month and determine whether stricter conservation measures are needed.
According to the weather bureau, expected relief may come on Thursday with new precipitation.
According to bureau, rainfall last month was disappointing. Forecasters said yesterday that rainfall last month in Taipei was 88.8mm, far less than the normal level of 188mm to 303mm.
In central Taiwan, officials said, last month's rainfall was 100.8mm, less than the normal level of 162mm to 280mm.
In southern Taiwan, rainfall last month was only 13.5mm, which is far less than normal levels ranging from 98mm to 235mm.
WRA officials said yesterday that Nangka might make it possible to channel more water from the Kao-ping River, which divides Kaohsiung and Pingtung counties, to the Nanhua Reservoir in Tainan County.
The officials said water levels at the Tsengwen and Wushantou reservoirs in Tainan County are falling due to heavy demand from the agricultural sector for irrigation.
The water accumulations at the two reservoirs yesterday were at their second-lowest levels in the past three decades.
The level at the Tsengwen, the largest reservoir in the country, was 168.84m yesterday, lower than the dead storage level -- the level below which water must be pumped out -- of 171m.
Due to the approach of Nangka, the Council of Agriculture yesterday urged residents in mountainous areas to take precautions in the event of mudslides.
"Although Nangka is just a tropical storm, residents in mountainous areas on the Hengchun Peninsula should check to see whether revetment and escape canals nearby can resist torrential rain," said Wu Hui-lung (
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
DEFENDING DEMOCRACY: Taiwan shares the same values as those that fought in WWII, and nations must unite to halt the expansion of a new authoritarian bloc, Lai said The government yesterday held a commemoration ceremony for Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, joining the rest of the world for the first time to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Taiwan honoring V-E Day signifies “our growing connections with the international community,” President William Lai (賴清德) said at a reception in Taipei on the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. One of the major lessons of World War II is that “authoritarianism and aggression lead only to slaughter, tragedy and greater inequality,” Lai said. Even more importantly, the war also taught people that “those who cherish peace cannot
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
RSS