Given low charges for water, incentives such as discounts for low water consumption might not have the desired effect, Water Resources Agency (WRA) Director-General Yang Wei-fu (楊偉甫) said yesterday.
Yang made the remarks at a legislative committee meeting on the threat of a water shortage caused by low rainfall, with water levels at the nation’s reservoirs continuing to decline and possibly reaching “alarming levels.”
Although some rain fell in the northern parts yesterday, the water level at the Shihmen Reservoir (石門水庫) has continued to drop, the agency said.
‘ALARM LEVELS’
As of 9am yesterday, Shihmen’s water level had fallen to a new low this year of 220.71m, the agency’s northern region office said.
That was slightly above the 215m level that the government designates as an “alarm level.”
The catchment area of the reservoir received only 5.5mm of precipitation on Sunday, far below the reservoir’s needs after a long dry spell.
Because of low amount of spring rainfall this year, water levels at other major reservoirs, such as Baoshan (寶山水庫) and Baoshan No. 2, are all at risk.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lai Shyh-bao (賴士葆) said the agency should give users discounts similar to those offered by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower), in which the more a subscriber conserves, the bigger the discount provided, to help reduce water consumption.
Yang said the agency implemented several water conservation measures last year, including subsidies for the purchase of water conservation equipment.
“The problem is Taiwan’s water rates are comparatively low, so these incentives failed to achieve the same effects as those offered by Taipower,” he said.
Asked about the recycling rate for industrial water, Yang said the rate was between 63 percent and 65 percent nationwide, and about 85 percent for the high-tech industry, resulting in an overall average of 75 percent.
There was still room for improvement, he said.
Yang said the country was also often troubled by inadequate precipitation in the first half of the year and too much rain in the second half.
The government has been implementing consumption controls and water conservation measures since early this year, and water use has dropped by about 95 million tonnes so far this year, he said.
AGRICULTURE
In the agricultural sector, the government has yet to impose fallow land requirements but has reduced water supplies to the sector, he said.
He said that if precipitation remained low, the agency might have to impose a second phase of water rationing at the end of the month. Non-urgent water supplies for purposes such as for street-cleaning will be halted, while supplies to swimming pools, car-washes, saunas and heavy users will be slashed by 20 percent per month and those to industrial users will be cut by 5 percent.
The agency implemented its first phase of water rationing in Hsinchu County on March 18 and expanded it on April 1 to cover Banciao (板橋) and Sinjhuang (新莊) in New Taipei City (新北市), as well as Taoyuan and Miaoli counties, Greater Taichung and Changhua County.
The rationing has taken the form of reduced nighttime water pressure for households.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS