Baoshan Second Reservoir (寶二水庫), which supplies water to the Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區), yesterday morning reached full capacity for the first time since June 22 last year, the Water Resources Agency (WRA) said.
Earlier this year, the water level was extremely low at Hsinchu County’s Baoshan Reservoir (寶山水庫) and the nearby Baoshan Second Reservoir, as no typhoons made landfall last year, resulting in much less rain in the second half of the year, which was exacerbated this year by less spring rain than usual and a late start of the plum rain season.
Baoshan Second Reservoir had 10.31 million cubic meters of water earlier this year, but the level fell precipitously, hitting a record low of 822,000 cubic meters, or 2.6 percent of capacity, on May 30, WRA data showed.
Photo courtesy of Chiu Wen-lang
The arrival of a plum rain front on May 30 brought significant rainfall to the reservoir over the next several days, allowing the Ministry of Economic Affairs to end water rationing measures for the Hsinchu area on Wednesday last week, the agency said.
From May 30 to Wednesday last week, the water level at the reservoir rose from nearly empty to almost full capacity thanks to the heavy rain brought by the weather front, it said.
Separately, the agency said that lower water levels in the past several months have allowed for reservoir dredging and storage capacity improvement.
Based on the agency’s latest data, dredging at the nation’s reservoirs this year has removed 11.11 million cubic meters of sediment, the highest for the same period on record and about twice the annual average of 5.64 million cubic meters, it said.
The government dredged 14.4 million cubic meters of sediment from reservoirs last year, the most on record, and aims to remove 15.22 million cubic meters of silt and sand this year, the agency said.
The removal of 25.51 million cubic meters of sediment at reservoirs since last year is equivalent to 5.5 times the amount of sediment cleared out of Tainan’s Zengwen Reservoir (曾文水庫), the nation’s largest reservoir, it said.
Last year, 4.62 million cubic meters was dredged from Zengwen, accounting for 30 percent of the total dredging in Taiwan’s reservoirs, the agency said.
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