The Love River (愛河) in Kaohsiung not only provides the city with drainage, it is also a place for leisure and recreation, as well as being an important tourist attraction. It is also a symbol for the city of Kaohsiung. Over the past few years, the Kaohsiung City Government has announced on several occasions to the press how they have cleaned up the Love River, attributing the success to a certain mayor. Four years ago, I wrote an article in the Chinese-language China Times in which I explained how both the Tamsui River (淡水河) and the Love River still needed a lot of work. I also explained that tasks of this magnitude took decades and are not something one mayor could be expected to completely achieve in only one or two terms in office.
Watercourse regulation is a form of hydro project that has many aspects and it needs both policy planning and public participation. The specialized nature of this job cannot be overemphasized. However, time and time again, in politicized discussions, we keep seeing how the opinions of the public regarding the quality of infrastructure for water resources keep getting further and further away from what is demanded by scientific indicators and professional codes. The scientific indicators for the treatment of rivers should include the following five points: Good quality river water, fixing the root causes of river pollution, restoration of the river’s natural environment, enjoyable scenery along riverside areas and safe and convenient leisure and recreation areas, in that order.
In other words, water quality is more important than aesthetics, while healthy river environments are more important than the leisure and recreational functions they may also happen to perform. After seeing the large floods in the city caused by Typhoon Fanapi last month, I think that I should add another criterium before the abovementioned five, and that is “adequate flood prevention and drainage facilities.” After all, flood prevention is the most important goal of watercourse regulation.
The Love River does not belong to the Gaoping River (高屏溪) watershed and according to classifications of rivers issued by the Water Resources Agency, the Love River is not administered by the central government. It is merely viewed as a local drainage system. Whereas the central government is responsible for the upkeep of the Tamsui River and the Gaoping River, responsibility for the watercourse regulation of the Love River lies with the local government.
On July 11, 2001, Kaohsiung experienced devastating floods. At the time, authorities said the flooding was due to the fact that the amount of rainfall brought by that typhoon occurred only once every 200 years. Last year’s Typhoon Morakot brought record rainfall, causing severe damage in Kaohsiung County’s mountain areas. Luckily, -Kaohsiung City did not experience too much damage. This gave us another warning. It showed us that not enough had been done for flood prevention and that a new approach was required. We need larger capacity flood detention pools and the flood drainage infrastructure needs to be improved.
The fact that the Kaohsiung region flooded again this year tells us that those in charge should accept responsibility and admit to failings in policy implementation. If they think the central government funds are inadequate, they should apply for more.
We cannot let politicians get away with their usual rhetoric, saying on the one hand that improvements in the Love River should be attributed to a certain local government, while on the other claiming that the local government can only be held responsible for 20 percent of the flooding caused by inadequate drainage. Unless something changes, I am afraid that the residents of the greater Kaohsiung area will have to keep dealing with large floods.
The extreme devastation wrought by Morakot saw the central government’s disaster relief efforts criticized harshly by various sectors of society and the premier step down as a result. The government also -conducted a review, made a number of organizational, policy and staff changes, and started to run a tighter ship. I myself have sat on a monitoring committee organized by the central government for Kaohsiung County in which we simulated a wide variety of disaster scenarios.
The central government admitted that it could have done better and there have been improvements since. People responsible for flood prevention failings during Fanapi should, in the same vein, reflect on where and how they went wrong and who should be made accountable, on both the local and central government levels. Only by making public safety our first priority can the people of Taiwan be guaranteed a safe living environment from the violent changes that may occur in the future as a result of further climate change.
Yeh Shin-cheng is a professor and director of the Graduate Institute of Environmental Education at National Taiwan Normal University and a member of the Kaohsiung City Sustainable Development Network.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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