More than 500 military personnel with dredging equipment have been mobilized to increase the capacity of five reservoirs as the country faces its most severe water shortage in decades, the Ministry of National Defense said on Tuesday.
Military officers and Water Resources Agency officials inspected the Shimen, Mingte, Liyutan, Tsengwen and A-kung-tien reservoirs from March 19 to Monday last week, said Major General Lin Wen-huang (林文皇), chief of the ministry’s Joint Operations Division.
Subsequently, the military dispatched 507 troops and 209 excavators, bulldozers, dump trucks and other equipment to support the agency’s dredging work, Lin said.
Photo courtesy of the Military News Agency
Soldiers from several army corps have been stationed in areas close to the reservoirs since Thursday last week, and began dredging work on Tuesday morning, Lin said, adding that funding would come from the Executive Yuan’s budget for fighting the water shortage.
The military told a news briefing that 124 troops have been assigned to support dredging at Shihmen Reservoir in Taoyuan, 111 at Tsengwen Reservoir in Chiayi County, 113 at Liyutan Reservoir in Miaoli County, 110 at Miaoli’s Mingte Reservoir and 49 at A-Kung-Tien Reservoir in Kaohsiung.
On Tuesday, the Eighth Army Corps Command started dredging work at Tsengwen and A-Kung-Tien reservoirs, with the aim of removing 300,000m3 to 600,000m3 of sediment from Tsengwen and 20,000m3 from A-Kung-Tien Reservoir, said Zou Hau-gui (鄒漢貴), deputy head of the agency’s Southern Region Water Resources Office.
More than 3 million cubic meters of sediment were removed from Tsengwen Reservoir last year, which increased the reservoir’s capacity by 1.55 million cubic meters, Zou said.
On average, 60,000m3 of sediment per year are removed from A-Kung-Tien Reservoir, Zou added.
Agency of Irrigation Director Tsai Sheng-fu (蔡昇甫) said that the water level at Mingte Reservoir is about 48.72m, or 11.32 percent of capacity, the lowest it has been since 1993.
The Sixth Army Corps Command aims to remove 330,000m3 of sediment from the reservoir, with dredging work to continue through the end of June, Tsai said.
Taiwan is facing its most severe water shortage in 56 years after no typhoons made landfall last year, with water supply in parts of Taichung, Miaoli and northern Changhua to be suspended for two days per week.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS