An abnormal change in tap water quality was found at Greater Kaohsiung’s Gaoping River (高屏溪) yesterday with a marked bad odor, leading Taiwan Water Corp (TWC) to announce a sudden shutdown of the water supply, affecting 12,000 households.
The move also affected another 20,000 households whose water pressure dropped.
The incident yesterday was the third time this year, after incidents in January and last month, in which water from the Gaoping River Weir was found with sudden increased levels of total organic carbon (TOC), resulting in emergency water supply shutdowns in areas of Greater Kaohsiung.
Although the bureau at the time suspected the reason to be water contamination, the source of the pollution was not found.
Chuang Mao-sheng (莊茂勝), deputy manager of the TWC’s Seventh Branch, said the corporation detected the abnormality at 5:30am yesterday and the water’s bad odor level was measured at 20, so it immediately established an emergency response center and decided to shut off the water supply and reduce pressure from 1pm yesterday to 11am today, to ensure safe water quality.
The areas that faced the temporary shutdowns included Renwu (仁武), Dashe (大社), Zuoying (左營), Fengshan (鳳山) and Chishan (赤山).
The corporation said it reported the case to the police and government agencies to increase monitoring of the area, he added.
Greater Kaohsiung Environmental Protection Bureau Director-General Derek Chen (陳金德) said inspectors did not find any abnormalities when they checked the site after receiving the report, and inspectors suspected that the cause of the abnormality may be humus from the dry season being washed into the river by rain.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods