The central government and the Tainan City Government yesterday inked a letter of intent to spend nearly NT$1.2 billion (US$37.42 million) to build the nation’s first reclaimed water plant for electronics manufacturers.
“The [central] government’s investment in the reclaimed water plant could support the rising water demand for industrial use and boost manufacturers’ confidence in investing in Tainan,” Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) told a news conference in Taipei.
As the plant is to supply water exclusively to electronics firms, the city government could have more water for household and agricultural uses, Lai said.
Photo: CNA
Taiwan last year suffered its worst water shortage in 67 years, prompting the Executive Yuan in March last year to allocate more than NT$15 billion to build six recycled water plants in Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsuing — all of which are prone to water shortages.
The first of the six to be built will be in Tainan’s Yongkang District (永康) and it is expected to become operational by 2020, with daily capacity of 15,000 tonnes of recycled water, Lai said.
Five manufacturers have agreed to purchase recycled water from the Yongkang facility, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) and Innolux Corp (群創), according to the Water Resources Agency, which is supervising the project.
Innolux president Wang Jyh-chau (王志超) told the news conference that his firm agreed to buy 4,000 tonnes per day of reclaimed water from the Yongkang plant, which would account for nearly 10 percent of Innolux’s daily water consumption.
“Innolux supports the city government’s water policy, as the use of reclaimed water is a way to stabilize Taiwan’s unstable water resources amid the drastic weather change,” Wang told the Taipei Times.
The Tainan City Government hopes to gain the Executive Yuan’s support to build a second plant in Anping District (安平), Lai said.
Tainan consumes nearly 900,000 tonnes per day of piped water for household and industrial use, and Lai said he hopes that by 2031 the city could supply 90,000 tonnes of reclaimed water per day to optimize the use of waste water and conserve natural resources.
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