A draft recycled water bill (再生水資源資源管理條例), which aims to help stabilize water supply for industrial and household use, yesterday passed its first reading at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee.
One of the key advantages of the bill is allowing manufacturers to reclaim effluent from sewers, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said.
“It is like adding an important source of water to the nation’s water supply,” Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Yang Wei-fu (楊偉甫) told reporters after the meeting.
Yang said he hopes the bill — drafted in May — would soon pass the second and the third readings at the legislature and become law.
Earlier this year, the nation encountered its most severe water shortage in 67 years, underlining the risk presented by an unstable water supply.
Taiwan has 54 wastewater treatment plants, with a daily treatment capacity of more than 3 million tonnes, the ministry said, adding that only 25,000 tonnes of that amount was being recycled.
“It is wasteful that the rest of the treated wastewater flows into the rivers or the ocean without being used again,” the ministry said.
The ministry said one of the reasons that the use of recycled water has been ignored in Taiwan is the lack of rules regulating the use of effluent.
With the proposed recycled water bill, industrial users could reuse the effluent from the sewers and supply water on their own without competing with household users for water allocation, Water Resources Agency Deputy Director-General Lai Chien-hsin (賴建信) said.
“Allowing manufacturers to reclaim the water from sewers will help stabilize the nation’s water supply,” Lai said. “The lack of rainfall will no longer become a problem for industrial users.”
The bill would require companies that wish to develop a new plot of land or set up plants in a region that has unstable water supply to recycle a certain amount of treated water.
If the region does not have sufficient effluent in the sewers, the companies will need to seek alternatives, such as constructing seawater desalination plants or rainwater capture and storage systems, the bill states.
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