Taiwan faces an acute water shortage and the country should brace for a new era in which saving water will be part of everyday life, Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-hsiang (施顏祥) said on Thursday.
“Due to drastic climate change, Taiwan might have entered a new age in which water conservation is the norm,” Shih said. “The per capita amount of reservoir water for Taiwan’s population is only about 30 percent of that in Japan or South Korea.”
“We have either heavy downpours or droughts in Taiwan,” he said. “This pattern of weather, coupled with Taiwan’s geology, makes it difficult for reservoirs to take in enough water because of the mountainous topography.”
Since the beginning of this year, rainfall levels in parts of northern and central Taiwan have been lower compared with a year earlier, pushing the government to consider restricting water use for the agricultural sector, Shih said.
At present, the agricultural sector consumes 70 percent of the country’s water supply, with 20 percent going to household use and the industrial sector accounting for about 10 percent.
“Taiwan must advocate the use of recycled water to cope with the seriousness of the situation,” the minister said.
However, Shih said that the low price of water in Taiwan makes it difficult to promote the use of reclaimed water.
Taiwanese use 350 liters of water a day on average, while the average in the US and Europe is 150 liters a day. The price of one unit of water in the US and Europe is NT$40, while in Taipei City it is just NT$7, and for Taiwan overall, NT$9, according to a 2005 study by the Water Resources Agency under the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Although the agency has called repeatedly for a hike in water rates, no adjustments have been made.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater