Standing in front of a giant banner hanging from a water gate and emblazoned with the words “protect the water,” hundreds of farmers and farmers’ rights activists yesterday protested at the source of an irrigation channel in Changhua County’s Sijhou Township (溪州) over the Central Taiwan Science Park’s (CTSP) plans to divert water from the irrigation system.
“Water is already scarce and [the Changhua County Irrigation Association] only supplies water through irrigation channels four out of every 10 days,” Hsieh Pao-yuan (謝寶元), a farmer and president of the Alliance Against Water-Jacking by the CTSP, told the crowd. “With the CTSP planning to take more water from the irrigation channel, we Chang-hua farmers are going to be left with nothing — that is why we have to stand united and protect the water.”
Hsieh’s remarks drew a round of applause and cheers.
Photo: Liu Hsiao-hsin, Taipei Times
The farmers are worried because the association plans to build an underground aqueduct to supply more than 65,000 tonnes of water from the main Cizaipijun (莿仔埤圳) aqueduct to the latest campus in Erlin Township (二林).
The water in Cizaipijun comes from the Jhuoshui River (濁水溪) and is controlled by the water gate where yesterday’s rally was held.
Hsieh and other farmers are worried that the park’s diversion of the water could have a huge impact on farming families that depend on the irrigation channel to make a living.
“The Cizaipijun irrigation system supplies water to 180,000 hectares of farmland in southern Changhua County, including Sijhou, Erlin, Jhutang [竹塘], Dacheng [大城] and Fangyuan [芳苑] townships, which feed more than 30,000 farming families or more than 100,000 people,” Hsieh said. “The park said it would hire tens of thousands of people locally, but do they plan to feed so many people?”
The participants then performed a rite of worship to the river god, praying for him to protect the water.
Farming activist Yang Ju-men (楊儒門) questioned the legality of the plan to divert water from farms to industrial uses.
“Article 18 of the Water Act [水利法] stipulates that the allocation of water should follow the following order: first, family use; second, agricultural use; third, hydroelectric power plant use; and only then industrial and transportation use,” Yang said. “So it’s illegal to divert water from farms to the science park, especially when there is already insufficient water for irrigation.”
Sijhou Mayor Huang Sheng-lu (黃盛祿) accused the Irrigation Association of not informing residents before contracting out the aqueduct project.
He said, although the project was contracted out in December, the association only contacted the township office four months ago to ask if it could provide a venue for a public hearing.
Pointing to earlier comments by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) that “if you care about the agricultural sector, you should not harm the farmers,” Taiwan Rural Front spokeswoman Tsai Pei-hui (蔡培慧) said that the lack of water was the most serious issue for farmers.
“The problem is not how much 1kg of bananas sells for, the real problem is that the government is trying to rob farmers of their land and water,” Tsai said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
RSS