The Cabinet's drought disaster-relief center yesterday announced that central and southern Taiwan would not move into the next stage of water rationing, thanks to rainfall on Thursday and Friday.
However, water rationing in both Taipei and Taoyuan Counties this weekend will continue, local media reported.
Taipei City will continue its rationing scheme, which calls for a suspension of water supplies to its five districts one day out of five, on a rotating basis.
By 2pm yesterday, the Shihmen and Feitsui Reservoirs had noticeably benefitted from the largest storm in over half a year. Accumulated rainfall amounted to 34.15mm at the Shihmen Reservoir.
Water intakes are estimated at 6 million tonnes for Shihmin and 2.5 million tonnes for the Feitsui Reservoir.
Although this is not enough to entirely relieve drought conditions, the Water Resources Agency (WRA,
Water supplies for the Presidential Office were cut Monday, the first day of rationing in Taipei City.
In an effort to fight the drought, the Presidential Office has adopted a number of measures to save water since March, including the installation of water-saving devices on toilets and a suspension of gardening and car-washing.
According to Taipei Deputy Mayor Ou Chin-der (
The timely rain has also helped alleviate the drought in the south.
It fell relatively heavily around the upper reaches of the Kaoping River Basin.
Around the Mutan Reservoir in Pingtung County, rainfall was meager most of the day yesterday.
It began again in late afternoon, but by 5pm accumulated rainfall was just 35mm, a mere 5mm over the morning measurement.
Nevertheless, water levels in the reservoir rose during the day from 124.58m to 124.6m, despite the release of 110,000 tons of water for irrigation and public use.
The effect of the rain was less pronounced around Tainan County, where the Tsengwen and Nanhua Reservoirs remain critically short of water, despite area rainfall levels of 64.6mm and 54mm, respectively.
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