The Water Resources Agency (WRA) yesterday conducted cloud seeding near a reservoir in southern Taiwan, but the operation resulted in little rainfall.
The effort aimed to boost the water levels of the Zengwen Reservoir (曾文水庫), which spans Chiayi County and Tainan, the Southern Region Water Resources Office said.
The office said that it launched the operation at 9am after detecting a cloud system approaching southern Taiwan.
Photo: Wu Chun-feng, Taipei Times
However, from 8am to 4pm, only 0.1mm of rain fell in the reservoir’s catchment area, after 0.3mm had fallen in the previous eight hours.
Following the operation, the reservoir’s water reserves rose by 0.2 percentage points to 27.99 percent of capacity, and its usable water supply rose by 110,000m3 to 142.62 million cubic meters, WRA data showed.
As of Dec. 17, the reservoir had not received more than 80mm of rain in a single day since Aug. 7, causing its water level to decline, the office said.
To conserve water, the office has reduced water pressure in Tainan and has issued a water advisory for Chiayi, its Web site says.
The Zengwen Reservoir, which is connected to the Wushantou Reservoir (烏山頭水庫) in Tainan, normally releases water to Wushantou to produce electricity, and the water is then distributed to the greater Tainan area and the Jianan Plain.
The Wushantou Reservoir is at 59.84 percent capacity, with 47.34 million cubic meters of usable water in reserves.
The combined amount of water at the two reservoirs is the eighth-lowest since the Zengwen Reservoir entered service in 1972, office data showed.
The Zengwen Reservoir’s reserves had fallen below 5 percent of capacity during the severe water shortage that affected Taiwan in 2021.
The only other reservoir in southern Taiwan facing a serious shortage is the much smaller Baihe Reservoir (白河水庫), which was at 24.25 percent capacity as of 8am yesterday, WRA data showed.
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