Taipei, May 9 (CNA) The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) took issue on Monday with a report that the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park, home to Google's cloud data center, is facing a water supply problem and losing investment because of it.

Both the Water Resources Agency under the MOEA and Taiwan Water Corp., a state-run company supervised by the MOEA, said the park's water supply was adequate at present and would increase substantially when a water purification station is completed in late 2017.

The United Daily News reported on Monday that Google's plan to expand its data center in the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park has been halted due to an inadequate water supply.

Update: 
●Plan to expand data centers in Changhua unchanged: Google

It was the second investment setback Changhua County has suffered since Facebook, one of the world's largest online social networking services, announced last week it was putting on hold a planned data center in Changhua's Tianjhong Industrial Park, the report said.

The widely-circulated newspaper said the shortage of water was a major challenge facing the county in its efforts to attract investment, but MOEA officials questioned where the United Daily News was getting its information.

Water Resources Agency spokesman Lai Chien-hsin (賴建信) said that in 2013 when Google came to Taiwan to build its data center, the agency and Taiwan Water had found a solution to meet Google's demand for 6,000 cubic meters of water a day and promised an adequate supply.

The Google data center only consumes 700 cubic meters of water a day at present, and there is therefore "no problem with the water supply," Lai said.

Taiwan Water spokesman Wu Chin-wen (武經文) said the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park required a supply of 19,000 cubic meters of water per day last year, but the park's occupants, including the Google data center, used less than 10,000 cubic meters per day.

That means that even if Google consumes 6,000 cubic meters of water a day, the supply of water to the industrial park will still outpace demand, Wu said.

Changhua County Magistrate Wei Ming-ku (魏明谷) said he expected water resources for industrial use in the county to be more abundant after Taiwan Water's project to build a water purification station along the Fuma Canal is completed.

According to Taiwan Water, it has budgeted NT$1.64 billion (US$50.5 million) on projects designed to boost water resources in Changhua County, which now relies on water from Taichung and Yunlin County for residential use.

The first project is to build the water purification station, which is designed to handle 50,000 cubic meters of water a day, the water company said.

The planned facility is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2017 and will resolve the water supply problem in the coastal industrial park once and for all, the company said. 

(By Milly Lin and Elizabeth Hsu)
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