To curb the use of agricultural water resources for industrial purposes, the nation’s 17 irrigation associations should be turned into a government agency, conservationists said yesterday.
The call echos one made by Legislative Speaker Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全) on Tuesday.
“The approval of irrigation associations is all it takes to use farm water for industrial purposes, and excessive water consumption by factories has led to water shortages. Environmental groups give full support to Su’s proposal so farms will no longer be robbed of water,” Taiwan Water Resources Conservation Union standing director Wu Li-hui (吳麗慧) said.
The associations can sell water and groundwater because they have water rights, but it is not reasonable for them to profit by selling public resources while being outside of the government’s control, Wu said.
“Irrigation associations can make as much as NT$250 million (US$7.66 million) simply by selling water to the Tainan Science Park, which makes the management of irrigation systems a lucrative business. However, no one can hold irrigation associations accountable for how they use the money they make,” Wu said.
“Formosa Plastics Group’s naphtha cracker [in Yunlin County’s Mailiao Township (麥寮)] is able to maintain a consistent water supply without the use of purified seawater even during dry seasons, when area farmers do not have enough water. We suspect that irrigation associations might have diverted farm water for the cracker plant,” Changhua Medical Alliance director Huang Chiu-feng (黃秋鳳) said.
Water is a public asset and should be managed by the government, but at present these groups can sell water and lease properties that were once irrigation channels, Huang said.
“What irrigation associations have been doing is destroying agriculture to develop the industrial sector. While the naphtha cracker enjoys a stable water supply, farmers in Yunlin and Changhua counties — the nation’s largest agricultural producers — have to drain groundwater to survive dry seasons. That might explain the severity of ground subsidence there,” said Lin Fu-yuan (林富源), a Yunlin County farmer.
The government must stand firm on the plan to bring the associations under its purview, farmers and conservationists said.
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