President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday pledged to solve the problem of sedimentation in reservoirs by injecting capital earmarked for the Cabinet’s Forward-looking Infrastructure Investment Program, in an attempt to prevent water shortages in the summer.
Tsai made the remarks while inspecting the Baihe Reservoir in Tainan.
The Presidential Office said that Tsai would visit regions across the nation to promote the program and lobby local governments and lawmakers for support.
Photo: Su Fang-he, Taipei Times
The government must expedite dredging work in the reservoir, as sedimentation built up since the reservoir’s completion has disrupted water supplies for households and irrigation to the point where water is rationed, forcing some farms to leave plots to lie fallow, Tsai said.
The scope of dredging is not limited to Baihe, but is to extend to the catchment basins of Chiayi County’s Tsengwen Reservoir and Taoyuan’s Shihmen Reservoir, she said.
As to calls to decommission the Baihe Reservoir and build a new reservoir, Tsai said that there is not enough space to do so, adding that the facility has an “irreplaceable” role in supplying water to Tainan’s Baihe (白河), Houbi (後壁) and Dongshan (東山) districts.
“This area is known as the ‘barn’ of Taiwan, where steady water supply is a necessity. I do not believe that anyone wants to see the merits of the reservoir wasted,” she said.
The president praised the Water Resources Agency’s work to restore the Baihe Reservoir to its designed capacity after being briefed by the agency.
“Two outlets have been completed. The elevation of the levee’s watertight core is nearing completion, and a tunnel that prevents sedimentation and flooding is expected to become operational in two years,” she said.
“The purpose of the Forward-looking program is to ensure that future generations will enjoy a good quality of life,” Tsai said. “If we respond quickly, it will help extend the reservoir’s life and save people money.”
Commenting on torrential rains seen across the nation in the past week, Tsai said that many people had already forgotten that the nation experienced an arid spring last year.
“The effects of climate change are becoming the norm, further accentuating the importance of the Forward-looking program,” she said.
Tsai expressed the hope that lawmakers across party lines would back projects to improve the nation’s water distribution and flood prevention capabilities, citing as an example the construction of drainage and water retention systems in flood-prone areas.
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
HOSPITALITY HIT: Hotels in Hualien have an occupancy rate of 10 percent, down from 30 percent before the earthquake, a Tourism Administration official said The Executive Yuan yesterday unveiled a stimulus package of vouchers and subsidies to revive tourism in Hualien County following a quake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale. The tremor on April 3, which killed at least 17 people and left two others missing, caused the county an estimated NT$3 billion (US$92.7 million) in damages. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is to issue vouchers worth NT$200 at the price of NT$100 for purchases at the Dongdamen Night Market (東大門夜市) in Hualien City to boost spending, a ministry official told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting in Taipei. The ministry plans to issue 18,400