Water conservationists yesterday urged the government to transform the nation’s 17 irrigation associations into a collective government agency to bring agricultural water management under government purview, but the proposal met with opposition from association members.
Irrigation associations have water rights over 70 percent of the nation’s farm water resources, but they can sell water and lease properties at their own discretion without being subject to government supervision, Taiwan Water Resources Protection Union spokesperson Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) said at a legislative hearing.
“An irrigation association in Yunlin can make as much as NT$300 million [US$9.31 million] per year by selling water to Formosa Plastics Group’s naphtha cracker in the county. While water resources should be considered a public asset for common use, irrigation associations can make a profit selling water without being answerable to anyone,” Chen said.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
Diverting farm water for factories has caused farmers to drain groundwater, leading to ground subsidence, farmer Lin Fu-yuan (林富源) said.
Conservationists called on the government to restructure irrigation associations into a government agency to curb the use of agricultural water resources for industrial purposes.
Water Watch Taiwan member Liang Yin-min (梁蔭民) said a 1,500 ping (4,958.7m2) property in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) that Pacific Sogo Department Store’s -Zhongxiao branch stands on belongs to the Liugong Irrigation Association.
“The retailer is permitted to use the property for free until 2030, after which the association can make a good profit with the property, which has an estimated value of more than NT$20 billion. However, profit generated by properties of irrigation associations should be shared by the public,” Liang said.
Water rights and properties owned by irrigation associations are public assets and therefore government management should be imposed, Liang said.
The nation’s 17 irrigation associations own 24,500 hectares of land and irrigate 373,096 hectares of farm land, with a yearly revenue of NT$12.6 billion, according to Council of Agriculture data.
Properties of irrigation associations were owned by farmers before the Japanese colonial period, but were expropriated by the Japanese colonial government for irrigation purposes. Later, the Republic of China government turned the Japanese-founded organizations into today’s irrigation associations.
Taoyuan Irrigation Association consultant Chen Zau-nan (陳昭南) said properties owned by irrigation associations are private assets belonging to association members, and transforming the associations into a government agency would amount to seizing private property.
“What does pollution created by the naphtha cracker have anything to do with irrigation associations?” Chen asked. “Ground subsidence in Yunlin is all about local fish farming. The public should not blame those problems on irrigation associations and we do not want the associations to be stigmatized.”
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
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
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