Premier Lai Ching-te (賴清德)

Taipei, Nov. 7 (CNA) Premier Lai Ching-te (賴清德) on Tuesday proposed building more emergency backup water supply systems as part of ongoing efforts to reduce water shortage risks during droughts that are becoming increasingly common in Taiwan.

According to the proposal, the government will create more water collection channels through which water can be moved from one area to another to complement systems that are already under construction and should be completed by 2019.

The government's idea is to build 10 additional water channels between 2120 and 2031 that can divert up to 4 million cubic meters a day from existing water sources to enhance water supply resilience.

Lai outlined three other strategies that successive governments have implemented to strengthen water supply -- creating new sources of water, fixing leaking pipes and encouraging water conservation, and facilitating water allocation mechanisms.

One way to conserve water is to reduce the loss of water due to leakage from water pipelines.

Taiwan is already undertaking an eight-year, NT$76.9 billion (US$2.53 billion) water leakage control project that began in 2013 and is aimed at replacing aging pipes, but the leakage rate at the end of last year was still as high as 16.63 percent.

Asked by the CNA about the leakage volume, officials at the Taiwan Water Corporation and Taipei Water Department said up to 626 million metric tons of water goes to waste from leakage every year, equivalent to just over three times the capacity of Shimen Reservoir.

Lai said the government hopes to step up leakage reduction work to reduce leakage to 10 percent by 2031, with a focus on Chiayi, Tainan, and Kaohsiung, where water demand is expected to rise quickly with the installation of heavy water-consuming factories.

After the eight-year project ends, the government will initiate a 10-year NT$63 billion project from 2021 to achieve the reduction target, Deputy Economic Affairs Minister Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said. 

(By Shih Hsiu-chuan)
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