TURNING TIDES: After historic droughts in Kaohsiung and Tainan, heavy spring rainfall has improved conditions, with officials now preparing for the looming rainy season
-
By Yang Yuan-ting and William Hetherington / Staff reporter, with staff writer
-
-
Water shortages affecting central and southern Taiwan since December last year have eased with the arrival of spring rains, the Irrigation Agency said yesterday.
Drought conditions in Kaohsiung have been fully resolved, while Tainan’s water outlook is more favorable than the past few years, when it faced historic droughts, the agency said.
Water supplies in central and southern Taiwan had been under pressure from December through April, but recent rainfall has improved conditions, particularly in Kaohsiung, it said.
The Zengwen Reservoir is pictured on Saturday.
Photo: Wu Chun-feng, Taipei Times
Irrigation Agency Director-General Tsai Sheng-fu (蔡昇甫) said several rounds of spring rain, much falling in Kaohsiung’s catchment areas, has significantly improved agricultural water supplies in the region.
The rainfall, combined with the end of the rice crop heading period this month — when water demand is highest — meant drought conditions affecting agriculture in Kaohsiung had been lifted, Tsai said.
Tainan still requires close monitoring, but recent investments in dredging, expanded reservoir capacity, irrigation infrastructure upgrades and earlier water management measures have improved the situation, he said.
Although spring rainfall in Tainan has been limited, storage at Zengwen Reservoir (曾文水庫) and Wushantou Reservoir (烏山頭水庫) remain at least one-third higher than levels recorded during the severe drought years of 2021 and 2023, he said.
Taiwan has entered the rainy season. During the earlier dry spell, the agency completed inspections, follow-up checks and improvements at more than 39,000 irrigation facilities nationwide.
It also completed dredging work covering 434km, removing more than 100,000m3 of sediment.
Tsai said that under increasingly extreme climate conditions, droughts and floods had become routine, with authorities often having to respond to both in the same year.
Based on long-term domestic and international weather forecasts, Taiwan is expected to gradually enter an El Nino year in the second half of this year, he said, adding that any typhoons striking Taiwan could bring strong winds and torrential rain.
To improve flood prevention, the agency has introduced smart technologies in the past few years, including remote camera monitoring at key irrigation canal points.
By combining live images with weather radar data, authorities can determine the best timing for opening and closing floodgates, Tsai said.
Heavy rainfall can also trigger landslides and sediment disasters that rapidly alter water flows, he said.
Automated systems can significantly reduce the time previously required for manual decisionmaking, helping minimize losses and speed repairs, he said.
In the past, repairing damaged water channels often took more than 30 days, but that has now been reduced to about 10 days, improving disaster resilience, Tsai said.
To prepare for flood-season agricultural disruptions, the Ministry of Agriculture said it has also readied nearly 335 tonnes of public grain reserves and 6,180 tonnes of refrigerated vegetables to be released as needed to stabilize supply, prices and volumes.
