President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday promised to tackle a looming water crisis facing the nation and work to prevent future droughts.
Ma presided over a meeting with Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長), Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) and other top government officials to discuss solutions to the water crisis and the current drought in southern Taiwan.
“The water crisis is quite serious, and we need to address the issue at a national level. The government needs to end the drought and come up with a long-term plan to address the water crisis in the face of climate change,” Ma said yesterday at the Presidential Office.
Ma said Taiwan has been suffering extreme weather conditions, including a drought earlier this year and flooding brought by Typhoon Morakot in August.
The water volume at Tsengwun Reservoir (曾文水庫) in Chiayi County, for example, is at just 39 percent of capacity. Southern Taiwan could soon suffer water shortages and the amount of rainfall forecast for the first quarter of next year is lower than average, Ma said.
Although the government can transport water from the north to the south as an emergency measure, it is not a long-term solution, he said.
Ma said the water shortage could become a national security crisis if the government failed to provide solutions and prevent the public from suffering. He demanded that government agencies present policies to tackle the issue.
Speaking after the meeting, Executive Yuan Spokesman Su Jun-pin (蘇俊賓) said the government would raise NT$34 billion (US$1 billion) to restore Tsengwun Reservoir and Nanhua Reservoir (南化水庫), the two main reservoirs in the south that have been plagued with severe sedimentation problems.
Su said the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) would come up with a proposal to tackle the long-term problem, which only worsened after Morakot.
“The possibility of taking out a loan to support the project has not been ruled out,” Su said.
The MOEA estimates that it will take six years and NT$26 billion to restore Tsengwun, preserve the water environment of its upstream catchment area and effectively improve its water supply capacity, Su said.
He said the project to revitalize Nanhua Reservoir would take NT$8 billion over seven years.
The country has been affected by a drought since the beginning of this year, apart from the record-breaking rains brought by Morakot in early August.
Furthermore, the mud washed down by the torrential rains brought by the typhoon led to serious sediment problems in water storage facilities.
The MOEA said the sediment in the Tsengwun Reservoir took up 32.92 percent of its storage capacity of 144.33 million cubic meters, while 22.27 percent of Nanhua Reservoir’s 631.2 million cubic meters was consumed by sediment, Su said.
The MOEA recently decided to suspend irrigation water to 19,000 hectares of farmland in Chiayi County and Tainan County to maintain sufficient residential and industrial water supplies until early next year.
“With the farmland lying fallow, the MOEA expects residential and industrial water supplies to remain stable until April in southern Taiwan and May in northern Taiwan,” Su said.
During the meeting Ma also urged the MOEA to propose water-conservation measures to encourage people to save water.
MOEA Minister Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) told the Central News Agency that a household can get a 5 percent discount on its water utility bill if it reduces consumption by 15 percent. If consumption is reduced by 30 percent, households will receive a 15 percent discount.
Shih said that the trial period for the measure would run from Jan. 1 to the end of June.
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