Taiwan is facing the most severe water shortage in 56 years due to a lack of rainfall, but it is also the best time for reservoir dredging, as lower water levels expose silt and sand, the Water Resources Agency said in a statement on Friday.
As many reservoirs in Taiwan have over the years accumulated too much sediment and are losing storage capacity, the government has increased dredging efforts, the agency said in a statement.
Last year, dredging at the nation’s reservoirs had removed 14.4 million cubic meters of sediment, the most on record and about 2.6 times the annual average, the agency said.
Photo courtesy of Water Resources Agency
In the first three months of this year, the government had dredged 3.57 million cubic meters of sediment from reservoirs, an increase of 280,000 cubic meters from the 3.29 million cubic meters in the same period of last year, doubling the annual average of 1.79 million cubic meters over the past 10 years, the agency said.
“We will continue to dispatch more machinery and workers to increase excavation and maximize dredging,” the statement said.
The volume of dredging was in the past relatively small, as the government mainly used excavators and truck transportation for reservoir dredging.
However, the volume of dredging has continued to rise, due to better governance and management, including conservation of upstream reservoir catchment areas, excavation of bottom sediment in the reservoirs and the use of hydraulic systems for sand discharge, it said.
The government last year removed 3.34 million cubic meters of sediment from the Shihmen Reservoir (石門水庫) in Taoyuan and 3.82 million cubic meters from the Zengwen Reservoir (曾文水庫) in Chiayi County, which not only exceeded the annual accumulation of sediment, but also helped enhance the reservoirs’ capacity by 1.2 million cubic meters and 1.55 million cubic meters respectively, the agency said.
As the shortage persists, semiconductor companies, which use large amounts of water, are increasingly taking emergency measures to stabilize production.
As Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and United Microelectronics Co (UMC, 聯電) together account for more than 60 percent of the global foundry market, production disruption due to the water shortage would affect technology production worldwide.
TSMC has begun trucking water from reservoirs in northern Taiwan to its fabs in southern Taiwan. Local media last week reported that the chipmaker would purchase 100 water trucks, after the government further tightened water restrictions for some areas.
Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) on Friday said that she was not sure about the size of the water truck purchase, but believed that it is part of the company’s contingency plan to ensure uninterrupted production.
However, the water shortage would have limited effect on semiconductor companies, as the government has pledged to increase water supply to the firms, she said.
UMC said it has also purchased water trucks, while other semiconductor firms might follow suit, local media reported.
If the shortage continues through the second half of this month, water levels at reservoirs would fall further, and trucking water to factories would become more common, the reports said.
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