Reservoir plan seen as harmful to environment

This article was published by the Taiwan Headlines on May 4, 2006. It reports that the government was recently urged to reconsider its plan to build the Hushan Reservoir in central Taiwan's Yunlin County. According to the National Council for Sustainable Development Network, the construction plan would damage the environment because it was earmarked for industrial use. The reservoir would not be increasing the water supply to residents of the county.

The Yunlin County Government supports the argument. It claims that the Hushan Reservoir project would be supplying water to the naphtha cracker projects and steel companies in the county. Furthermore, Yunlin County would not need another reservoir after the completion of a local water purification facility in the end of 2006. The facility would provide the county residents with 200,000 tons of water per day through a nearby barrage.

Other reasons why the Hushan Reservoir project should not go ahead include the site's geological location, which is prone to landslides and water infiltration due to the vulnerability of the surrounding hillside areas. Because of this, the Environmental Protection Administration rejected an ecological assessment report by the Water Resources Agency in 2005. The government is now urged to halt the construction project and wait for the Water Resources Agency to come up with an acceptable environmental assessment report. Otherwise, the establishment of the reservoir would only worsen Taiwan's land subsidence problem, which is a result of continuos pumping of underground water for irrigation by farmers.

Local environmental groups voiced their opposition to the construction project in March 2006.

However, all these arguments were rejected by the Water Resources Agency under the Ministry of Economic Affairs. According to the agency, the Hushan Reservoir project has been under development since 1979. It was planned so that residents of Changhua, Yunlin and Chiayi counties would have a more sufficient water supply. After supplying an expected daily amount of 140,000 tons of water to residents in these three counties, the reservoir would not have enough water to provide for the steel companies and naphtha cracker projects.