The politics of flushing
In a Facebook post on Friday last week, Kaohsiung City Councilor Jane Lee (李眉蓁), the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate in the Kaohsiung mayoral by-election, proposed that sea water should be used to flush toilets. The suggestion was part of her political platform, and aimed at solving the city’s water quality and usage issues.
The suggestion is feasible, as Hong Kong has done so for years. The problem is that using sea water requires a completely different system for drawing, filtering and purifying water, and the system would also require new pumping stations and sewage treatment facilities exclusively for sea water.
In short, the costs would be high, and it remains doubtful whether it would be ideal for Kaohsiung.
As Lee only casually touched on the topic without elaborating further, the proposal has backfired and drawn howls of derision from her opponents.
While Taiwan has a dry season, overall rainfall remains sufficient. Nevertheless, severe sedimentation problems have reduced the reservoirs’ effective storage capacity, and old water pipelines leak, wasting water resources. More proactive dredging and pipeline replacement would be more effective in increasing the city’s water availability.
Furthermore, cities and counties across the nation are closely connected, and basic necessities such as water, electricity, telecommunications and gas should be available for distribution between these places to cover any shortage.
The water issue in Kaohsiung could perhaps be solved by transporting water from the north to the south, similar to how electricity is distributed from the south to the north. The cost would be far less than for seawater desalination.
The central and local governments should consider taking immediate feasible steps to deal with Kaohsiung’s water quality and shortage problems.
Chen Ho-wen
Taipei
As Taiwan’s domestic political crisis deepens, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have proposed gutting the country’s national spending, with steep cuts to the critical foreign and defense ministries. While the blue-white coalition alleges that it is merely responding to voters’ concerns about corruption and mismanagement, of which there certainly has been plenty under Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT-led governments, the rationales for their proposed spending cuts lay bare the incoherent foreign policy of the KMT-led coalition. Introduced on the eve of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the KMT’s proposed budget is a terrible opening
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
Last week, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), together holding more than half of the legislative seats, cut about NT$94 billion (US$2.85 billion) from the yearly budget. The cuts include 60 percent of the government’s advertising budget, 10 percent of administrative expenses, 3 percent of the military budget, and 60 percent of the international travel, overseas education and training allowances. In addition, the two parties have proposed freezing the budgets of many ministries and departments, including NT$1.8 billion from the Ministry of National Defense’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program — 90 percent of the program’s proposed
RSS