Oil leaking from a construction site contaminated an important source of drinking water in central Taiwan yesterday, leaving roughly 300,000 families without water.
The spill at Shihkang Dam (石岡壩), Taichung County, was reported early yesterday morning.
PHOTO: LIN CHUN-HAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Staff members from the Water Resource Bureau, who oversee the dam, said that an unidentified liquid covered part of the water's surface as they carried out a regular inspection yesterday morning.
Bureau officials said that the pollutants must have come from a nearby construction site because oil pipes for excavators at the site were broken. Oil leaked into the Tachia River (
When the pollution was discovered, part of the polluted water had already been channeled into the Fengyuan Water Treatment Plant (豐原淨水廠), operated by Taiwan Water Supply Company. The plant supplies more than two million residents in the Taichung metropolitan area.
Taiwan Water officials piped out at least 50,000 tonnes of contaminated water from the plant, causing a shortage of potable water in certain areas.
When inspecting the dam yesterday afternoon, Taichung Deputy Commissioner Liu Shih-fang (劉世芳) said that the water supply company should prevent similar accidents from happening in the future.
Bureau official Kuo Feng-hsiung (郭峰雄) said that the oil leakage was caused by a mechanical breakdown. Kuo said that the problem was fixed after the pollution was discovered.
Taiwan Water manager Chung Teng-ying (
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