Taiwan has one of the highest rainfall rates in the world, but only a small percentage of the rain is stored. Still, people in Taiwan on the average use twice as much water than people in more developed countries. Taiwan has many high mountains and the rain flows off quickly to the sea, so the only way to keep the water at home is to build dams. However, the steep landscape and quick erosion of topsoil can also damage dams. It seems that heaven is playing a joke on the Taiwanese by sending so much rain, but so little usable water. But a group of people in southern Taiwan are pondering how to solve the water problems they are facing.

For residents of Meinung, Kaohsiung County, and members of the water protection movement in southern Taiwan, there are many difficulties in protecting water for their descendants. In May 1994, the Legislative Branch of the central government slashed the budget for a dam in Meinung after strong protests from local residents. But whenever an industrial zone is proposed or a water shortage problem surfaces in southern Taiwan, the central government brings back the issue of building the dam in the area and points out that people in Kaohsiung won't have any usable water after 2006.

The biggest challenge ever

The area south of the Choshui River in central Taiwan is dry in winter and rainy in the summer. However, every year the plentiful rain runs off to sea in rapidly flowing rivers, so there is usually not much left. The Chianan Plain (consisting of Chiayi and Tainan counties in southern Taiwan) has many dams which can alleviate the water problems for farmers and residents. The Pingtung Plain has plenty of groundwater, so it has no problems for the moment.

The Kaoping River in Kaohsiung County has plenty of water, but the river itself has been contaminated by industry for years. Although the water is treated, people still sense a strange taste in the water and fear that it might contain carcinogens. Such feelings lead local residents to believe that they are second-class citizens in Taiwan. Many petrochemical and steel industries, which consume a lot of water, are located in Kaohsiung, so the city must locate better water resources for both the public and the industries.

Therefore, the government has decided to build the Meinung Dam on the Shuang River, a branch of the Meinung River and the upstream section of the Kaoping River, for cleaner water and to meet the demands of an increasing population. What is more important is that it will be able to provide water for industries in all of southern Taiwan.

No clean water

However, with the increasing demands, the Meinung Dam will not provide enough water after 2021. There is a limit to the dam's life span, and there are few places where other dams can be built, due to the rugged terrain of the island. When the "post-dam" period comes, what choices will our future generations have? Will they still have water to drink? The war to protect water for our children has been declared.

In 1992, when news of the proposed dam on the Shuang River leaked out, people from Meinung realized that the dam would not bring them prosperity, and so they opposed the construction of the dam. They discovered that when the dam is completed, the water will overflow the Shuanghsi Valley, thus destroying many indigenous tropical trees and the famous Yellow Butterfly Valley. Some rarely seen birds would also lose their habitats. People of Meinung are very proud of these natural properties, which can never be restored once they are destroyed.

What is even more alarming is that the dam will be two hundred meters [660 feet] long and 147 meters [485 feet] high. It will be like a hundred fifty-story buildings lined up side by side, only 1.5 kilometers [0.9 mile] from the closest village. If someday the dam were destroyed in a war or an earthquake, the consequences would be completely unimaginable. When the dam is completed, that village will have to be relocated elsewhere.

Out of their love for the land and their home town of Meinung, several young people have pondered whether it is necessary to build a dam to retrieve clean water from the upstream area to solve the water problem in the greater Kaohsiung area. Would the dam solve the water problem permanently? Before the dam-building news went public, these young people had returned to Meinung because they didn't want to see their hometown dwindle. They realized that to save it from being destroyed, they had to discard the traditional concept of "not in my backyard" and return to the issue of water itself. The front and foremost question was: Did the greater Kaohsiung area have a water shortage problem?

"No, Kaohsiung doesn't lack any water--it simply needs clean water," said Sung Yen-tung, one of the young returnees and a teacher at Nannung Junior High School in Meinung. At a public hearing on Meinung Dam in 1992, he said that if the government really wanted to provide clean water for the people in metropolitan Kaohsiung, the best way was to clean up the Kaoping River and its banks and make the river, with its abundant water, the main water source for Kaohsiung.

Liu Hsiao-shen, another returnee and also a teacher at Nannung School, added that it is extremely difficult to promote that kind of idea in an era when the government adamantly insists on carrying out its policies. The activists face more opposition whenever there is less rain, thus compounding the water problem. When the Linyuan Industry Park in Kaohsiung was faced with the problem of salinified groundwater, there were also calls for a new water source. Thus, the people of Kaohsiung consider Meinung Dam their last hope.

An international perspective

Meinung residents despaired when they received so much pressure from society. In the end, they had to solicit help from abroad. At that time, an article, "The Debate over Large Dams," published in the journal of the American Society of Civil Engineers, gave them great hope.

The article mentioned that a dam blocks the flow of water and sediment in the upstream section, thus completely changing the ecosystem of the river itself. With less water flowing, there are fewer fish and increased pollution. There is also less sand and soil at the mouth of the river, which leads to shoreline erosion. Because of these serious consequences, dam building has become somewhat unstylish. These facts made the people of Meinung understand better the dynamics of a dam and the responsibilities they were shouldering.

In July 1993, Sung Yen-tung went to study in the United States, and he also went to find the author of that article. He only knew the person's name and that he lived in San Francisco, so it was like finding a needle in a haystack. With the help of directory assistance, he got a list of all the people with that name and phoned each one of them. Finally, he found the author.

The author, Philip B. Williams, was the chairperson of the International Rivers Network, which was organized by a group of California scientists who were active in issues regarding water resources. These people started their mission by opposing wrong water policies in California, and they hoped to share their experiences with other people who were doing the same thing elsewhere. Williams came to Taiwan in the winter of 1993. His visit gave great support to the people of Meinung and expanded their vision. They now knew they were trying to find a better road for their future generations.

While the effects of Williams' speech started to spread throughout southern Taiwan, someone also came to rescue the damaged Kaoping River. Dr. Tseng Kui-hai, a native of Pingtung in southern Taiwan, had just won the fight to retain some green land for public use in the heavily industrialized city of Kaohsiung. Driving home with some friends, he saw the Kaoping River through the window and recalled the opposition against building the Meinung Dam. He also remembered his high school years in Kaohsiung.

At that time, he had to take the train from his home in the country to his high school in Kaohsiung. He spent more than three hours on the train every day, during which time he did his homework. The sunrise and sunset over the Pingtung Plain and the scenery along the Kaoping River had become the most wonderful memories in his life.

Thirty years passed, and Tseng became very concerned for the environment and the ecology. However, he forgot the Kaoping River, which had been damaged the most. But now, as he rode by the river after so many years, a thought of protecting the river formed inside his head. His friends doubted that this 171-kilometer [106-mile] river could be saved. Nevertheless, Tseng still turned his idea into action by forming the Kaoping River Protection Green Union in March 1994. This group joined forces with others who were also opposed to the construction of the Meinung Dam. After that, more environmental groups came into existence and demanded the protection of water resources in southern Taiwan.

In October 1995, Tseng's organization and the Kaohsiung Green Society held a conference on rivers around the world. The meeting aimed to make people realize that old concepts like "Man will triumph over nature" would make people pay a terrible price in the end. Only a natural method of water management can guarantee the sustainable use of water.

These people hoped that after the river had become clean again, the government could use the most cost-effective and least intrusive method of building water reservoirs or lakes on higher ground along the riverbanks, and thus allowing the riverwater, which would otherwise go straight to the sea, to be stored underground. If a dam were built upstream, it would become impossible to restore life to the river and use it forever. Also, as Sung Yen-tung observed, dams in Taiwan gather as much as forty-three percent of the sediment in the water. The geology in southern Taiwan is not very stable, and rivers tend to carry a lot of sediment. When a dam is filled with sediment, its usefulness is finished. Sung estimated a dam could only last for fifty or sixty years.

Advent of water conservation

While searching for alternatives to dam building, environmental groups also questioned the government's policy on water usage. The government's "1996 White Paper on Water Resource Policy" pointed out that every person in Taiwan used more water every day than people in other advanced countries. The per capita amount was twice that in Japan, and water pipes in Taiwan have a leakage rate of twenty percent. Chen Jung-tso, a member of a wetland protection society, angrily questioned the government’s policy of allocating NT$6 billion [US$1.7 billion] to build Meinung Dam instead of using the money to improve water pipes and passing laws that would force people to conserve water.

But what really upset these people, who cherish the value of water, was that only thirty percent of water used by industries in Taiwan was recycled, less than half of the amount in Japan. Furthermore, the government insisted on establishing water-consuming petrochemical and steel industries in southern Taiwan, especially in Tainan County, where there was already a very serious water shortage problem. Most recently, the petrochemical and steel industries wanted to establish the Pingnan Industrial Zone on a wetland in Tainan County.

The government kept saying that people in Kaohsiung County wouldn't have any more drinking water after 2006, so there was a need to build the Meinung Dam. But in reality, an environmental assessment report on the Pingnan Industrial Zone stated that in the long run, water for the industrial zone had to come from the Meinung Dam. The 1996 White Paper also stated that water from the Meinung Dam would be for both public and industrial use.

Chou Ke-jen of the Blue Tungkang River Environmental Group was quite concerned that according to the government's economic forecast, more water would be consumed in the future. Eventually, water from the Meinung Dam wouldn't be enough. Someday in the future, when there is no more land available to build dams, our future generations will not have any water to drink.

New ideas to protect water

In July 1994, after repeated calls from the public, the provincial government organized a team to help clean up the Kaoping River and budgeted NT$50 billion [US$1.4 billion] and eight years for the work. The next year, the budget was increased to NT$80 billion and the deadline was set back to 2021. However, the focal point of the clean-up work was not what Tseng had expected: most money went to laying down water pipes to divert clean upstream water to nearby dams.

The 1996 White Paper also pointed out that the reservoirs behind the other dams were being damaged by human activity, causing topsoil to wash down and collect behind the dams. The total capacity of all major dams in Taiwan is decreasing at the rate of 14 million cubic meters a year, and Akungtien, Wushantou, Yenshuipi, and Chienshanpi dams (all in southern Taiwan) can only store half of their original amount. The paper mentioned that in order to meet the demand for 3.2 billion tons of water in 2021, the government should build another sixteen dams.

Protecting the water is a very tiresome job, but those who are doing it are still looking forward to what Williams wrote at the end of his article: "In the future, engineers may be very proud of themselves for managing rivers in ways that don't affect the flow of the rivers and that bring health and prosperity to the communities that depend on the rivers."

After the October 1995 conference on the rivers around the world, a seminar on man-made lakes and ponds around the world that would help supplement groundwater was held in Kaohsiung in 1998. It seems that ideas to protect water resources and the towns that depend on them have started to emerge in southern Taiwan.