The DROUGHT

I don’t think the building of new reservoirs will long term be a fix. Land here is very finite but the population is not (pop growth isn’t that great but it isn’t falling). So in the short term it may work… but this is such a wasteful community. Someone needs to bite the bullet but unfortunately big infrastructure projects win out at the expense of well thought long term planning.

CNA had a story yesterday but I don’t know if it was picked up. The government is to begin dredging a total of either 5 or 12 million cubic meters (choose one – the reporter used both figures – in the same paragraph! )of silt from reservoirs islandwide. According to this obviously stellar source, this will create additional water capacity equivalent to the total capacity of one of the exisiting major northern Taiwan reservoirs.

Pity they’ve started about a year too late.

I don’t know how many of you have visited and actually looked at the reservoirs on this island… They are SMALL, but deep. That said, it is no wonder at all that we are going for a swift dredge up s–t creek; as has been observed by several of you already: there is no effort to educate or develop water conservation techniques in the home… But worse is simply the lack of planning: I believe quite firmly that the island really really DOES need larger reservoirs to sustain the huge population. That’s all… Should the reservoirs run dry, you won’t believe what a catastrophe will result, and I won’t be a bit surprised if many of us will be obliged to LEAVE whether you want to or not… The cost of bringing in oil super-tankers full of water for people to drink and wash with will be ghastly enormous! You won’t want to pay, brothers. Better start praying for rain, and dancing for it too! It will take no less than 6 to ten big typhoons to fill her up, jacko… Not too likely…

On a tangent about Taiwan’s lack of infrastructural development: has anybody ever heard about the infamous Sewage Treatment plant project? Well, as you all know by now, half the reason for the existence of all major Taiwan cement construction companies is basically NOT to build anything, big or small, but to bilk money to pay for Mr. Small Monkeyman’s big black Mercedes face! So, the sewage treatment plants that were supposed to be built upstream along the Tamsui throughout Taipei – they just have never materialized, despite the zillions of NT spent on their supposed “construction”. Take a ride along the San Chung river bikeway – it’s lovely, but don’t forget to pack your gas mask, kiddies… YECH! I’d rather drink fresh piss than have to ride that every weekend…

ppppppppppppppssssssssssppppppppppprrrrrrrrrrrrr

The thing that I find facinating is that at least two officials have said that the cost of water is too cheap and that is why people use too much…implying that we have caused the drought.
What DO they use for grey matter?
Also, a Chinese told me last night that Chen Shui-bian has bad fungshui and his name implies taking away water. I was also told that he is bad luck because the flooding last summer was under his watch – more water trouble.

As far as the toilets go–in Nepal they use non flush charpis or squat style toilets that can be manually flushed out with a bucket of water. This saves water . Then the really resourceful people turn their excretement into a gas that can be used for their cooking needs called Biogas. Imagine the self generating power a whole apartment complex could have!!!

The toilet in your apartment here can also be manually flushed, of course, or you can simply fill a couple bottles and dump them in the cistern for the same water-saving effect.

The problems with expecting everybody to change thier habits are:

  1. Unreliability

  2. Domineering laws

  3. Inefficiency often occurs

  4. Money spent on campaigns

  5. Social engineering project often times must always remain active

Based on the unreliability alone and considering that if the lake ran dry it would be a huge disaster, I think something predictable is needed. Do the conservation thing too, but don’t leave it up to that. Who knows, Taiwan might be crowded like Tokyo sometime and a culture of conservation would be needed. But predictability rules when lives are at stake.

quote:
Originally posted by wolf_reinhold: The thing that I find facinating is that at least two officials have said that the cost of water is too cheap and that is why people use too much...implying that we have caused the drought.

Huh? I don’t see how it implies that at all.

Drought or no drought, if something is priced too cheaply, then it will be used inefficiently. Just witness how much more wasteful Americans are with regards to gasoline and electricity than Europeans for example.

By the way, for water to be priced “correctly,” the price not only has to reflect the cost of treating and distributing water, but also the cost of building reservoirs and water delivery/irrigation systems, and indeed even the cost to the environment of such waterworks projects.

quote:
SAVE WATER DILUTE IT!!!!

I don’t think cutting the water will be too bad. I plan on buying a big plastic rubbish bin (that’s a trash can) to fill with water and leave int he bathroom. I can use that for showers and flushing. I just dread the unflushed loos (that’s toilets) of 200 kids at my kindy.

Re: charging for water. I disagree that it should reflect the cost of the water. presumably charging for water should be to discourage excessive and wasteful use. So a good price structure would be free or very cheap up to a limit that was deemed acceptable household use, then very expensive past that limit. Think about your phone. If the price sudddenly leapt to 10NT a minute after X hours in a month, you’d be careful not to talk too much.

Anyone seen someone hosing down the street to keep themselves cool yet this summer?

bri

Price Increase:
Everyone I know pays for water using the automatic bank deduction, so I don’t think we will feel any pain from price increases while we are daydreaming in the shower.

Water Rationing:
Everyone I know is storing water and adding or upgrading water towers. My water tower is good for one week by the way. It was upgraded after several earthquakes broke it. If anyone gets too hot, they can come and join me in our building

Does anyone know where Bitan fits into the water saving scheme (Sandman?)? Some people at work have told me that it’s in the city scheme and others, that it’s in the county scheme. When do the cuts start? Tonight or next Friday night?
It seems pretty counter productive if my coleagues are anything to go by…There’s supposed to be about 30 days water left, so if it rains in decent quantities within the next 30 days, things are pretty ok, however because of the cuts everyone seems to be stocking up at water at home, so there’s probably about 20 days supply left now because of all the water thats stocked in homes now…

You can read about the water rationing in Taipei Times Online:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/news/2002/05/10/story/0000135407

If you are storing water then its not really saving any.

quote:
Originally posted by 4abudabit: If you are storing water then its not really saving any.
That's why the whole program to cut the water supply temporarily is nonsens. There are water towers on almost every house and where I had been living before even in the basement - that house would have stored water for about a month! Now when the water supply stops for a day, the water will come from the tower anyway and no-one really notices it. After that day, the pumps will be busy refilling the tower...

Bitan is under the Taipei City rationing rules, not Taipei County. Something to do with the jurisdictions of the water supply authorities.

So the water will be cut Friday, in order to at least give the impression that the authorities are actually doing something useful and haven’t been sitting for the last year with their thumbs up their backsides.

Wonder what fantastic figures they’ll dream up to show us trusting public how much water we’ve “saved.”

I’m guessing the savings made in one city district per day will be maybe just enough to keep, say, TSMC running for … oh … maybe two hours?

Yep, it’s my turn for no water today and haven’t noticed the slightest bit of difference. Thanks to water tanks, the taps worked int he morning, water at work, didn;'t go to the gym becuase was afraid no showers but here at the internet cafe there’s water too. Taipei Times has a photo fo a film crew creating artificial rain for a shoot yesterday. Bought a rubbish bin and filled it with water last night. I guess I should try and use that water to flush the loo instead of just tipping it out.

Bri

This afternoon in Shihlin water fell out of the sky. Can anyone tell me what the hell that was all about? Are the gods crying?

That earthquake was fun today…not.

Here’s a theory on the recent earthquakes in the Taipei region.

The northern part of the island has dried out rapidly and the reservoirs have emptied over the last few months. Perhaps the earthquakes are partly a result of this drought!

If you think it’s totally preposterous check this link out…

http://tremor.nmt.edu/here.html

quote:
Some earthquakes in southeastern New Mexico may be related to oil and gas production, and a series of earthquakes recorded near Heron and El Vado reservoirs in northern New Mexico were apparently caused by the weight of the water in the reservoirs.

http://www.seis.com.au/Basics/Dams.html

quote:
Examples of Reservoir Triggered Earthquakes World Koyna, India, 1967, M 6.7

Xinfengjiang, China, 1962, M 6.2

Australia
Warragamba, NSW, 1973, ML 5.5

Thomson, Victoria, 1996, ML 5.1


Admittedly this was from the filling of large reservoirs after a few years and maybe was epicentred at the reservoir. But what if the reverse were true?

We had a huge amount of rainfall concentrated in a few months which saturated the Taipei basin. This was quickly followed by a prolonged drought and the emptying of reservoirs all over north Taiwan. This could help to trigger the release of the stress from the local continental plates. By all accounts earthquakes this large and frequency are very rare in the Taipei area (although people haven’t been keeping records too long in these neck of the woods).

Therefore we are creating our own demise!!!

I feel that this drought is really a combination of many problems that all came together:

1)Lack of education about water
2)Water that is too cheap
3)Wasteful use of water (resulting from 1 and 2)
4)Government inaction (or ostrich mentality-if I don’t look, it doesn’t exist)

For goodness sake! Taiwan is an ISLAND and fresh water is very limited!! Now take California as an example. Around 1991 there were signs of an upcoming drought, mainly brought about by wasteful agricultural use. The government immediately started water conservation campaigns (I remember testing for leaky toilets and installing water-saving washers) and let water prices change with market conditions. I NEVER ever remember turning on the faucet and not having water.