The government said the launch of an irrigation program for the second rice crop in the south this year will be postponed until June 21 as a drought in southern counties is likely to persist through this month.
Speaking at a meeting presided over by Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs Hwang Jung-chiou (黃重球) on Thursday reviewing the nation’s water supplies and outlining strategies for dealing with the drought, a Water Resources Agency (WRA) official said that “we do not exclude letting the rice paddies lie fallow if rainfall remains insignificant in southern Taiwan until the middle of June.”
If the policy is implemented, it will be the first time in 30 years that paddies for the second crop in southern Taiwan were left fallow, WRA officials said.
Even though this year’s plum rain season began early this month, rainfall in the south, particularly in upstream catchment areas of the region’s major reservoirs, has not been significant. Rainfall in Tainan and Kaohsiung counties totaled about 25 percent of the accumulations recorded in previous years, officials said.
The southern paddies were left fallow late last year for the first crop of the season because of the drought.
Water restrictions could be imposed on big water users — factories, swimming pools or other heavy water-consuming businesses that consume more than 1,000 water units per month — by the middle of next month at the earliest if drought conditions continue.
Hwang told the WRA and Taiwan Water Corp, the nation’s only running water supplier, to consider putting contingency measures in place if the drought continues.
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