Water shortages in most parts of the nation have eased as recent weather fronts have brought heavy rains to parched areas, the Water Resources Agency said.
The water situation has returned to normal in Taoyuan, the southern area of Chiayi County and some parts of New Taipei City, while water rationing measures in Greater Tainan have been lifted, the agency said.
From May 3 to Monday, a total of 63.73 million tonnes of water was collected in the Shihmen Reservoir (石門水庫) in northern Taiwan, sending water levels from 54 percent to 69 percent of capacity.
During the same period, the Renyitan Dam in southern Taiwan collected 6.33 million tonnes of water, rising from 24 percent to 36 percent of capacity, the agency said.
Further south, the Nanhua Reservoir (南化水庫) has filled to 49 percent of water capacity, after collecting 35.83 million tonnes of water, the agency said.
With water levels rising, the agency changed the water code in New Taipei’s Sinjhuang (新莊), Linkou (林口) and Banciao (板橋) districts, as well as Taoyuan and Chiayi, from “green” to “blue” on its five-color scale, indicating that water supply had gone from tight to normal.
The agency said the water supply in those areas is likely to remain stable until the end of July.
Meanwhile, irrigation of the second rice crop in the Chiayi-Tainan area is to proceed as scheduled this month in light of the improved water situation, but on a rotational basis, the Taiwan Chia-Nan Irrigation Association said.
While the Wushantou (烏山頭) and Zengwen (曾文) reservoirs in the area have collected 30 million tonnes of water so far this month, their combined storage last month was only 72 million tonnes — less than 15 percent of total capacity, the association said.
Rotational irrigation will be adopted since it will require at least 400 million tonnes of water to fully irrigate the 40,000 hectares of farmland in the area, it said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift