The quality of tap water supplied to residents in Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County has improved significantly since a major national project was completed late last year and the water supplier's performance remains steady, the Environmental Pro-tection Administration (EPA) said yesterday.
After completing an inspection of Taiwan Water Supply Corp's seventh district management department in Cheng Ching Lake, Kaohsiung County, EPA officials said that residents in the south could be confident of the quality of tap water.
"According to our local bureaus in the city and the county, samples of tap water taken in the past few months have all passed the test," said Ho Soon-ching (
Yang Shui-yuan (
To improve the quality of tap water in Kaohsiung, the central government budgeted NT$15 billion in 2001 to have intake points in Kaoping River moved upstream and to build three advanced treatment plants.
In the past, Yang said, the unsatisfactory quality of tap water in Kaohsiung could be attributed to excessive levels of chloride, which was added to water to kill bacteria. Sometimes the chloride caused the formation of trihalomethanes, which is thought to be a possible carcinogen.
"Now we use much less chloride. The samples we took tested negative for trihalomethanes," Yang said.
Wang Mao-sung (王茂松), director of Kaohsiung County's Bureau of Environmental Protection, said residents' confidence in tap water would be restored. Many residents buy filtered water from street vendors at the price of NT$10 for 20 liter.
Meanwhile, at a meeting conducted by the Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday, officials said the drought in the north had been relieved by recent rains. Water levels at major reservoirs are satisfactory, officials said.
"What we have now can sustain us until the end of May," said Chen Shen-hsien (陳伸賢), director-gene-ral of the Water Resources Agency.
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
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Snow fell in the mountainous areas of northern, central and eastern Taiwan in the early hours of yesterday, as cold air currents moved south. In the northern municipality of Taoyuan, snow started falling at about 6am in Fusing District (復興), district head Su Tso-hsi (蘇佐璽) said. By 10am, Lalashan National Forest Recreation Area, as well as Hualing (華陵), Sanguang (三光) and Gaoyi (高義) boroughs had seen snowfall, Su said. In central Taiwan, Shei-Pa National Park in Miaoli County and Hehuanshan National Forest Recreation Area in Nantou County saw snowfall of 5cm and 6cm respectively, by 10am, staff at the parks said. It began snowing
The 2025 Kaohsiung Wonderland–Winter Amusement Park event has teamed up with the Japanese manga series Chiikawa this year for its opening at Love River Bay yesterday, attracting more than 10,000 visitors, the city government said. Following the success of the “2024 Kaohsiung Wonderland” collaboration with a giant inflatable yellow duck installation designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, this year the Kaohsiung Tourism Bureau collaborated with Chiikawa by Japanese illustrator Nagano to present two giant inflatable characters. Two inflatable floats — the main character, Chiikwa, a white bear-like creature with round ears, and Hachiware, a white cat with a blue-tipped tail
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