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.
An apartment building in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) collapsed last night after a nearby construction project earlier in the day allegedly caused it to tilt. Shortly after work began at 9am on an ongoing excavation of a construction site on Liuzhang Street (六張街), two neighboring apartment buildings tilted and cracked, leading to exterior tiles peeling off, city officials said. The fire department then dispatched personnel to help evacuate 22 residents from nine households. After the incident, the city government first filled the building at No. 190, which appeared to be more badly affected, with water to stabilize the
Taiwan plans to cull as many as 120,000 invasive green iguanas this year to curb the species’ impact on local farmers, the Ministry of Agriculture said. Chiu Kuo-hao (邱國皓), a section chief in the ministry’s Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency, on Sunday said that green iguanas have been recorded across southern Taiwan and as far north as Taichung. Although there is no reliable data on the species’ total population in the country, it has been estimated to be about 200,000, he said. Chiu said about 70,000 iguanas were culled last year, including about 45,000 in Pingtung County, 12,000 in Tainan, 9,900 in
DEEPER REVIEW: After receiving 19 hospital reports of suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health applied for an epidemiological investigation A buffet restaurant in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) is to be fined NT$3 million (US$91,233) after it remained opened despite an order to suspend operations following reports that 32 people had been treated for suspected food poisoning, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. The health department said it on Tuesday received reports from hospitals of people who had suspected food poisoning symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, stomach pain and diarrhea, after they ate at an INPARADISE (饗饗) branch in Breeze Xinyi on Sunday and Monday. As more than six people who ate at the restaurant sought medical treatment, the department ordered the
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
RSS