Taiwan Water Corp (TWC), the nation’s sole distributor of piped water, said on Monday it would close its 155 deep wells in Yunlin County by 2016 as part of efforts to stop land subsidence in the area.
The state-owned company will not begin closing the wells until the Hushan Reservoir (湖山水庫), which is under construction, begins supplying water in June 2015, as scheduled by the Water Resources Agency, company executives said.
However, they defended the company’s wells, saying they were “absolutely not to blame for the land subsidence” in the county and that the real culprits were the 107,000 illegal wells dug by farmers to obtain water for irrigation.
SUBSIDENCE PROBLEM
The company has been accused of playing a key role in leading the county into a land crisis because of its wells.
The problem of land subsidence in the county has been at the center of heated public debate in recent years over the safety of the high-speed railway after Taiwan High-Speed Rail Corp warned that some support pillars for the elevated railway in Yunlin were subsiding at an alarming pace.
Experts have attributed the subsidence to the many wells in the region. As a result, the company said it began taking measures in 2008 to seal its wells there.
NOT THE ONLY ONE
However, the company said ground subsidence in Yunlin could not be stopped forever unless all the illegal wells are also capped.
Public Construction Commission Minister Lee Hong-yuan (李鴻源) said on Sunday that the new reservoir would be able to supply roughly 200 million tonnes of water a year when it starts operating, which would be sufficient for the area’s water needs.
Company officials also said that although the wells will be capped, it would be possible to reopen them if the need arose during a drought.
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