Thirty-three mobile wastewater treatment facilities would be available by the end of this month to treat wastewater and generate up to 9,225 tonnes of water per day to help tackle the worst water shortage in decades, the Water Resources Agency said yesterday.
Those facilities — 18 that can generate 500 tonnes of water each day and 15 that can produce 15 tonnes — are part of efforts to find other sources as supply tightens, the agency said.
The wastewater would be treated to remove harmful substances and distributed for industrial use, it said in a statement.
Photo: CNA
Other sources of water, such as underground water, would be purified to meet the standards for drinkable water and would be introduced to the tapwater system for household use, it said.
Some wastewater treatment facilities have been operating in Tainan and Taichung since March, the agency said.
As of yesterday, only two of the nation’s 16 major reservoirs were half full, while most of the remainder were less than 10 percent full, the agency’s data showed.
The Shihmen Reservoir (石門水庫) — the country’s third-largest reservoir and a major supplier to the Taoyuan area — was at just 9.1 percent of capacity, the Techi Reservoir (德基水庫) in Taichung reported being only 1.2 percent full, while the Zengwen Reservoir (曾文水庫) in Chiayi County was 6 percent full, the data showed.
Weather fronts are expected to begin arriving this week that might replenish the reservoirs.
The fronts are forecast to bring occasional heavy showers nationwide, but weather forecasters said they might not be enough to alleviate the water shortage.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
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Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day