i found several articles about the sewage problem. the govt. recognizes the problem. it’s just going to take some time to resolve it.
http://english.www.gov.tw/TaiwanHeadlines/index.jsp?recordid=26353&action=CNA
ONLY 15% OF TAIWAN HOUSEHOLDS CONNECTED TO SEWER SYSTEMSTaipei, Nov. 1 (CNA) As of the end of September, 2006, only
847,000 households or 14.9 percent, were connected to a sewer system,
although the nation’s waste water treatment plants were treating
32.49 percent of the sewage created by its 23 million people,
officials of the Construction and Planning Agency under the Ministry
of the Interior said Wednesday.
The agency said the government plans to increase the sewage
treatment rate to 40 percent within three years.
Taiwan is one of the most densely populated countries in the
world. Despite its economic development over the past few decades, it
has one of the lowest rates of households connected to public sewage
systems among developed countries. The low sewage treatment rate is
the main source of pollution in the country’s major rivers.
About 25 percent of the total length of Taiwan’s rivers is listed
as either heavily or moderately polluted. Reservoirs are also heavily
polluted. Pollution sources are broken down as 40 percent from
municipal waste water, 36 percent from industrial waste water and 24
percent from livestock waste.
The agency said the rise in connection rate this year was
contributed largely by Taipei and Kaohsiung cities and Taipei County,
with little progress reported in other cities and counties.
From the 1950s, when the government started to build the first
sewage treatment system in Nantou County, until the early 2000s, very
little attention and resources had been given to sewage treatment
projects.
In recent years, the government has started to recognize the
importance of building a comprehensive sewage treatment system. The
percentage of the total population served by public sewage treatment
systems is a benchmark of a country’s development and living
standards.
The total budget appropriated for construction of sewage systems
in 2003 was NT$9 billion (US$264 million) . In 2004, the authorities
budgeted about NT$10.2 billion (US$ 300 million) for building sewer
systems.
To meet the 20.8 percent connection rate target set by the
Challenge 2008 National Development Plan, central and local
authorities will continue to increase spending year-on-year for the
construction of sewage systems.
The government is also encouraging the private sector to work
with the public sector in building or expanding new sewer systems on
the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model, said the agency.
http://www.taiwanheadlines.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=56505&CtNode=39
PUBLIC SEWER CONNECTION RATE INCREASES TO 15.2%: CPA
12/29/2006 (CNA)
Taipei, Dec. 29 (CNA) Taiwan’s public sewer connection rate had reached 15.2 percent as of the end of November, up from 14 percent at the end of last year, officials from the Ministry of the Interior’s Construction and Planning Administration (CPA) said Friday.
The government has budgeted NT$11.09 billion for the public sewer connection project for 2006, the officials said, adding that 79 percent of the outlay had been spent on the project as of the end of November.
Thanks to concerted efforts of the CPA and local governments, an additional 69,542 private homes have been connected to public sewers in the past year, the officials said.
Meanwhile, the officials said some local governments have signed contracts with private business groups to build the Tamsui sewer system in Taipei County, the Nantzu sewer system in Kaohsiung City and the Loutung sewer system in Yilan County. With the participation of private investors in the sewer connection project, the officials said, the public sewer connection rate will surge further in the coming year. (By Nick Huang)
http://taiwanreview.nat.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=23576&CtNode=128
…One may wonder how people can stand so much untreated filth being discharged into rivers. But the situation is not quite as Dickensian as it seems. Hank Huang, researcher in the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, offers some explanations. He says that he does not feel there is a wide gap between Taiwan and those countries he has visited that claim to have more than 50 percent of households connected to public sewerage. “For one thing, the widespread septic tanks in Taiwan perform treatment to some degree before discharge of wastewater,” he says. Indeed this is the whole point of the anaerobic bacterial environment that develops in the tank. “And also, the typical short, fast running rivers in mountainous Taiwan have a much greater capacity for flushing themselves out, especially during heavy rains or typhoons, than the slower, longer rivers in foreign countries.”
James Hu, board chairman of the Taiwan Sewerage Association, says that the top priority should be sewerage development in the densely populated cities. In this respect, the situation is more encouraging. Taiwan’s two biggest cities, Taipei and Kaohsiung, have seen significant progress in the past decade. In Kaohsiung, the household connection rate rose from less than 7 percent in 1997 to 43 percent by the end of 2006. As a result, together with the extensive interception facilities installed along the Love river, the city’s largest waterway has been transformed from a filthy open sewer into a major tourist attraction. In Taipei, household connection has increased by an average of 5 percent each year since 1996 to around 80 percent by the end of 2006.
good thing i hate oysters. they so fishy tasting and look like ox snot.