The Kaohsiung Water Resources Bureau plans to spend NT$60 million (US$1.99 million) on a wastewater treatment and water recycling system on the Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島) to preserve marine resources and protect the environment, a city official said on Sunday.
The islands, located 450km south of Kaohsiung in the South China Sea, are part of the Dongsha Atoll National Park, Taiwan’s first ocean-based national park, which was established in January 2007.
The islands are under the jurisdiction of the city government.
Pratas Island, 25km in diameter, is rich in coral reefs and ecological resources, and the waters around it are home to a wide variety of marine life, bureau Chief Engineer Liang Jin-yuan (梁錦淵) said.
Construction and Planning Agency officials and the bureau decided to draw up a plan to significantly reduce marine pollution from wastewater after inspecting wastewater treatment facilities on the island, Liang said.
There are 30 buildings and 200 people living on the island, but only the administrative office is equipped with wastewater treatment and water recycling facilities, Liang said.
Water used by people in the other buildings seeps into the soil before flowing into the ocean, he said.
Because untreated wastewater can affect the ecology of coral communities, the bureau plans to build a wastewater treatment system to treat about 50 to 70 cubic meters of water a day, which could then be reused for irrigation and to wash vehicles, Liang said.
The project is estimated to cost about NT$60 million and the bureau plans to ask for funds from the central government as part of its infrastructure development plan, with work expected to start next year, he said.
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