There is water everywhere in the Shihmen Reservoir, but not enough to drink for many nearby residents in Taoyuan County, and relief is slow in coming.
Minister of Economic Affairs Ho Mei-yueh (何美玥) said yesterday that the turbidity in the reservoir has made purification problematic and that water supplies will have to continue on a rotational basis for the approximately 600,000 households in the county.
Some were optimistic about the situation on Sunday when Premier Frank Hsieh (
The problem came after Typhoon Matsa, which passed through Taiwan Friday, brought torrential rains and stirred up sediment and brought silt and debris into the reservoir.
Taoyuan County Commissioner Chu Li-lun (
The state-run Taiwan Water Corporation (TWC), which is under the economics ministry, said water supply reached 60 percent of the normal level as of yesterday.
TWC Chairman Lee Wen-liang (
Meanwhile, the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus in the Legislative Yuan said that the central and local governments should work together to solve the water supply problem.
William Lai (
Lai made the remarks after the People First Party (PFP) legislative caucus criticized Ho for being incompetent and asked Hsieh to replace her before the new legislative session next month.
Sun Ta-chien (
On Ho's views that water supply situation has improved this year, Sun said he felt sorry for the 1.8 million residents in Taoyuan after Ho has said that she felt that the water shortage situation was improving.
Sun asked Ho to come forward and explain what exactly she meant by that statement and to tell residents what it was that she had actually done to improve the situation over the past year.
The problem with the water supply first cropped up last August when Typhoon Aere hit the nation.
Water supplies to households in most of Taoyuan were cut off for 19 days.
Both the chairman and the general manager of the TWC subsequently resigned over the fiasco.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift