Here we go again. Those of you who have suffered this before -was it 2002? 2001?- should have enough empty plastic gallons to weather this through -pun intended. If not, buy promptly.
Keeping up with the developments:
Some action is being taken:
[quote]Taiwan may have to resort to cloud seeding Monday to induce rain at two reservoirs in the north of the country as a dry spell persists, an official said Sunday.
If the conditions are right, cloud seeding will be carried out in the areas near Shihmen Reservoir in Taoyuan and Mingte Reservoir in Miaoli County, said Tien Chiao-ling, deputy director-general of the Water Resources Agency (WRA).
An approaching cold front is expected to affect only northern Taiwan, Tien said, implying that the cloud cover brought by the front will allow for possible cloud seeding only in the north of the country.
It’s far easier to implement rationing than dredge the reservoirs, I guess. Sure, anything less than constant rain becomes a “drought”, but all they have to do is close access to the water supply periodically.
In a country with as much rainfall as Taiwan, there should be no need to ration water. The majority of Taiwan’s water is used for agriculture and industry, but of course they can’t tell the farmers to stop wasting it (which they do) or let outdated, pointless heavy industry fail (which it should) because, like, that would affect the economy. Or at least the election results.
Damn! I had a feeling this would happen, what with the low rainfall levels.
Hopefully it will be nowhere as near nasty as the great StinkFest of Fall 2004.
The majority of Taiwan’s water is simply not there. Most reservoirs are at 30% capacity when they are full due to the amount of silt that has been allowed to be built up throughout the years and it is way way too late for dredging. Just to make a dent there would be a need for hundreds of dredgers to be in operation around the clock. Even if you did acquire said amount of dredging equipment, the logistics of removing the silt once dredged becomes another impossible feat. There would need to be a massive fleet of equipment to collect and remove the silt daily. You think the mountain roads are bad now, wait until you have a couple of hundred gravel trucks going back and forth continuously.
Basically they ignored the problem for so long that they are now stuck with an unmanageable amount of junk at the bottoms of the reservoirs. However, they have been working on a solution for many years, and even if they were aware of the situation from the beginning the technology/know-how simply wasn’t around. There is a possible solution in the works now though, construction is to start on one of the reservoirs down south early next year. It is a massive project and if it works they plan on doing the same with the other reservoirs island-wide. Their proposal could work, it’s been performed in a few other places, but with common knowledge of corner cutting and chabuduo’ism that takes place here myself and others involved have our high doubts. Cost cutting has already began and the project hasn’t even started. Just wait and see.
[quote]Taipei, March 18 (CNA) The Taipei Water Department said Monday that it will continue to provide water to the Banqiao and Xinzhuang districts of New Taipei to tide them over a water shortage.
The department noted that before the Feb. 10 Chinese New Year, it supplied 120,000 tons of water per day to the two districts, which it has now increased to 420,000 tons per day, the equivalent of providing enough water for an additional 900,000 people.
The department said spring rainfall has been far less than expected and that the water level of the Shihmen Reservoir in northern Taiwan, which mainly supplies water to Taoyuan county and Linkuo in New Taipei, has continued to drop.
The department said the reservoir also supplies water to Banqiao and Xinzhuang.
In Nantou County, meanwhile, a cold front brought some rain, most of which fell on flatter areas and only temporarily relieved the parched land. The rain had little effect on increasing water levels in the area's reservoirs.
In Hualien, rainfall accumulated so far this year has decreased markedly compared with previous years and river levels are down
Seems like we get these every year at the end of the dry season, or after a drier than expected typhoon season. Then we get a good rain and the advisories vanish. It sounds like a weird sort of doublespeak when authorities call these problems “droughts,” when this is actually one of the wetter places on earth. They just get so used to the regular abundance of rainfall that they won’t upgrade infrastructure, build new reservoirs or become more efficient with the resource. Like most years, we’ll probably get a day or two of rain and these warnings with get washed away.
Quite. It kinda reminds me of England, in reverse, where every year we have chaos caused by snow. Regular as clockwork, completely predicable, and yet somehow nobody ever seems prepared for it. Taiwan has a monsoon climate, and a very benign one at that (two rainy seasons). Deal with it, people. It’s not hard.
For your perusal- more about our fragile water reservoirs:
[quote]Radioactivity monitoring measures have been upgraded at Taipei Feitsui Reservoir as part of ROC government efforts to ensure the ongoing safety of Greater Taipei’s water supply.
“A radionuclide analysis system has been installed that can quickly detect particle concentrations in the reservoir,” TFR Administration Commissioner Liou Ming-lone said May 1. “We have also set up an environmental radiation monitoring station operating 24/7 to detect contamination.”
Liou made the remarks in New Taipei City during the No Nukes Taiwan Forum, an atomic safety promotion campaign organized by the local government and Yilan Charlei Chen Foundation.
According to the commissioner, the reservoir supplies water to six million users in northern Taiwan. It is located 37 and 26 kilometers from the Chinshan and Kuosheng nuclear power plants, respectively, and only 9 kilometers from the under-construction Lungmen station.
Experts believe that if a major accident takes place at any one of the facilities, the reservoir’s watersheds will be affected within six to 36 hours.
[/quote] taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem= … ctNode=445