Residents in Taipei County's Rueifang (瑞芳) and Sijhih (汐止) Townships will no longer suffer from flooding now that the Yuanshanzih Sluiceway (員山子分洪道) is completed, the Cabinet's Water Resources Agency said yesterday. The agency made the confident assessment after the sluiceway performed well through two typhoons -- Haitang and Matsa.
"The sluiceway worked, and helped distribute rainfall during the two recent typhoons' pummeling of northern Taiwan," said Joses Wu (吳約西), secretary-general of the agency. "So we can announce the end of Rueifang and Hsichih residents' nightmare."
Rueifang and Hsichih Townships have been notorious for constant flooding every time typhoons tore through the areas in the past few years, due to the extraordinary curves of the Keelung River.
In addition to dredging and straightening the river, the agency also built the Yuanshanzih Sluiceway to help redirect run-off to the sea.
The construction began in June 2002 and was completed this June. The sluiceway, which cost NT$6.3 billion (US$198 million), had its first challenge when Typhoon Haitang touched down on July 18.
On Friday, Typhoon Matsa hit the nation and became the sluiceway's second challenge. The construction did help prevent flooding and residents' typical battle with the problem was averted.
According to Wu, under normal conditions the sluiceway helps filter out mud from the Keelung River. If the water level in the river hits a high 63m, sluicegates automatically open and redirect water to the sea.
"The sluiceway actually helped decrease by more than 1.5m the depth of the waters of the Keelung River in the Rueifang and Hsichih areas," Wu said. "So we should not be worried about being flooded again in the future."
In addition to protecting the nearly 2 million residents in the Taipei metropolitan area, the Yuanshanzih Sluiceway has been a focus of media coverage.
On Oct. 25 last year, when Typhoon Nock-Ten was pounding northern Taiwan, a local TV photojournalist drowned at the sluiceway's construction site during a flashflood while he was waiting along with other reporters to cover former premier Yu Shyi-kun's visit to the site.
Prosecutors' investigation showed that the sudden floods that drowned the photojournalist came from the sluiceway, which began to distribute and re-direct rainwater toward the group of journalists.
The government has paid a total of NT$570 million as compensation to Rueifang fishermen for losses due to the completion of the sluiceway's construction.
According to the Rueifang Fishery Council, the turbid water from the sluiceway now floods into their old fishing grounds, reducing fish stocks in the area and hurting their business.
After the fishermen complained to the government, the Cabinet's Fisheries Administration paid compensation to resolve the dispute.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS