When the forecasts that the "plum rains" of May would help to ease the drought turned out to be wrong, Taipei City reluctantly took the extreme measure of rationing. The city has been split into five water districts, and since May 13 the government has been shutting off the water supply to each district one out of every five days. If the drought continues, the city will take the fourth-stage measure of shutting off the water a full two days a week. This represents the first time in over two decades that the city has been forced to impose water rationing for an extended period of time. The issue of water resources-as a matter of concern to the people and as something that could affect Taiwan's economic development-also has moved into the national spotlight for the first time.

The Shihmen Reservoir in Taoyuan, which supplies water to Taipei and Taoyuan counties, was, early this year, the first place to throw up a red flag about a water shortage. Its effective water volume has fallen to little more than 600 million tons of water, or enough for only 40 days, and an earlier measure to halt water flow out of the reservoir for one-and-a-half days each week has been extended.

There's a Chinese expression: "A flood is like a line; a drought is like a wide plain." As if on cue, reservoirs in central and southern Taiwan one after another have reported shortages. There are a number of reasons to explain the shortages: apart from abnormal weather associated with El Nino, reservoirs have been poorly maintained for many years and are heavily silted up, reducing their ability to retain water; other water stores and channels, such as retaining ponds in the Taipei and Taoyuan area, have disappeared; and an inappropriately high percentage of water (50%) has been going to agriculture. All these factors have contributed to the crisis.

As the drought's shadow has lengthened, the government at the highest levels has grown more and more anxious. On May 1, for the first time ever, the cabinet established a drought disaster-relief center, with Kuo Yao-chi, executive-general of the Public Construction Commission, serving as director-general. Various ideas have been proposed, such as channeling water from the south and desalinating seawater. Yet since the drought has already reached crisis proportions, one city and county government after another has been forced to adopt water-rationing measures as their main defense against the shortage.

At the same time that the entire island is suffering from a water shortage, various other problems have come to the surface as a result of the shortage, including leaking water mains and the silting of reservoirs. Because these would respectively require NT$100 billion and NT$10 billion to fix, the problems have elicited a lot of passionate discussion.

Just as the halls of government were reverberating with heated debate about the shortage of water, on May 8 Taiwan Power, as a result of the drought and increasing demand from the rebounding economy, began rationing power without prior warning. This decision has had an impact on more than 2,000 industrial users.

Kuo Jan-tai, a civil engineering professor at National Taiwan University, points out that because the water reservoirs in Taiwan are naturally unreliable storehouses of water, dams usually generate only one-tenth of Taiwan's electricity supply. Hence, the need for electricity rationing cannot be blamed mainly upon the water shortage. In fact, in March Taiwan Power had already begun consuming natural gas at an unsustainable pace, but it did not contact Chinese Petroleum Corporation to increase the supply or attempt to find another solution. It wasn't until consumption reached 150% of replacement levels in May that it finally issued a completely unexpected warning.

Part of the problem is that three of Taiwan Power's liquefied natural gas storage tanks have never been put into use because of technological defects unresolved by their Japanese contractor. The power shortage has also led to widespread suspicions that Taiwan Power is technologically inept and unable to handle crises. As a result, its chairman Lin Wen-yuan tendered his resignation.

Droughts always seek the company of fellow disasters, and on the morning of May 11 a forest fire started to burn on Mt. Li that lasted for seven days. The fire covered an area of nearly 185 hectares, and more than 1000 people were mobilized to put it out. It was the largest forest fire in Taiwan for over half a century. Although "human factors" are held primarily responsible for this particular blaze, the very fact that the year's first forest fire occurred in May during the plum rain season instead of in June as is usual points to the need to revise Taiwan's forest protection controls.

Finally, the rains did come on May 15, with torrential downpours falling on central and southern Taiwan. In Pingtung and elsewhere water restrictions were gradually lifted. But northern Taiwan has yet to receive a major drought-relieving rain, and conditions continue to deteriorate. Legislators harbored suspicions that the Water Resources Agency had long ago received documents alerting it to the potential of a water shortage, but they neglected their duty to notify their superiors in a timely manner. The Control Yuan also formally admonished the Water Resources Agency (which is under the Ministry of Economic Affairs), as well as the water company and the Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park, for their poor planning.

"The water shortages and power rationing of this May show the people of Taiwan just how unpredictable water supplies are," says Kuo Jan-tai, who reminds people to take note of this warning from Mother Nature and prepare themselves for the possibility of drought at all times. For instance, several of the major water treatment plants in northern, central and southern Taiwan release as much as one million tons of used water a day, and this has yet to be advantageously reused. And people have yet to develop habits that reflect an understanding of the importance of conserving water. In fact, water restrictions in a crisis are not as important as water conservation measures during normal times. For example, several factories in the Hsinchu Science-Based Industrial Park were already recycling their water, and thus had less to fear because they were more prepared for the water shortage.

The reliability of sufficient water supplies will affect Taiwan's future six-year economic plan, and is also a focus of concern for foreign industries considering investments. After the drought, the central government and local governments have alike began to focus on the problem of silting in reservoirs and leaking water mains. The Water Resources Agency has also emphasized that the ROC is committed to reducing the amount of land under cultivation as a condition for joining the WTO, which will free up some of the water now used by agriculture. It also plans to draw up new standards for charging for water use based on examples of systems employed in other nations, which will use price to control demand, so that water resources are most efficiently used.

Apart from achieving a more equitable division of water resources, the best approach for Taiwan to take is to prevent excessive development within the watersheds that supply reservoirs and to implement water conservation methods so as to prevent over-dependence on the reservoirs. Only this sort of preventive medicine will get to the root of the problem.

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Taiwan is experiencing its worst drought in 20 years. Even the Feitsui Reservoir, long a stable source of clean water, has suffered such a decline in water volume that water rationing has been implemented in the greater Taipei area. (photo by Pu Hua-chih)