Concept of Water Management
In order to create a special municipality-level living environment for the citizens of Taoyuan City, the DWR has been actively drawing up a budget and striving for a subsidy from the central government’s Comprehensive Basin Management Plan, so as to execute a comprehensive governance and management of whole river basins, from upstream to downstream in Taoyuan. The city government’s policy priorities include (1) soil and water conservation in watersheds, debris flow control, enhancement of slope land management, and flood control; (2) reducing flood in flood-prone areas, promoting disaster resistant communities, enhancing disaster-prevention capability; (3) promoting construction and management of public sewers, along with reclamation and reuse of water resources, and (4) improving river water quality and creating safe and water-friendly waterfront corridors.
To achieve administrative goals, the DWR has six developing aspects, which are whole river basin management to ensure living safety, enhancing flood drainage capacity in metropolitan areas to reduce flood positions, disaster preparedness, disaster response, and post-disaster reconstruction, intelligent information management to increase flood control capacity, expediting sewer construction to improve water quality and sanitation, creating a water-friendly environment to build a waterfront city. The six developing aspects aforementioned can be divided into three categories, i.e. water conservation system, water and soil conservation, and sewage treatment.
1. Water Conservation System
(1) The DWR's primary objective is the whole basin governance on the nine rivers and 176 regional drainage systems in the city, some of which passing through the urban planning districts are dredged at least once, while the rest are dredged for the bottle-neck sections. The “Life Cycle Maintenance Engineering” concept is applied to achieve sustainable utilization. In terms of the characteristics of the nine main rivers in the city and problems presented, the DWR has planned, reviewed and implemented the rectification plan, the key items of which include removing waste in channel, modifying cross-channel structures, and strengthening the protection of revetments. To work out a flood treatment plan in flood-prone areas, the DWR has set a governance goal with the river is based on which pass through 25 years recurrence interval and non-overflow by 50 years recurrence interval; while for regional drainage systems is based on which pass through 10 years recurrence interval and non-overflow by 25 years recurrence interval. Furthermore, the priority has been given to the planned river segments that warrant urgent improvement and rectification.
(2) The metropolitan areas are struck by floods due to major public roadworks, extensive urban rezoning, and land development. The DWR conducts the survey of the city drainage bottlenecks every year, improving the drainage problems of the local side ditches, drainage systems, and rainwater drainage systems. In addition to the flood-diversion project, detention pond project, and inspecting and dredging current storm sewers, the DWR aims to increase the storm sewer of 3km on average per year to complete the drainage system in urban areas. Suction pumps are predisposed in flood-prone areas to which improvements are unable to be completed before the flood season. In the meantime time, tracking work is being continued to improve the city’s drainage bottleneck areas, enhance urban flood control capacity, reduce floods, and protect people's life and property.
(3) As global climate change and extreme weather changes often cause large-scale disasters, extensive preparations should be made, including flood prevention and rescue drills; preparedness for flood-control supplies and open contract manufacturers; strengthening the lateral linkage between district offices for flood prevention, disaster reduction and disaster relief against floods and debris flows; keeping a close watch on the circumstances through holiday shifts; cross-agency coordination of disaster prevention strategies; increasing flood retention space by operating ponds, and other pre-disaster preparations. It is required for the DWR to deal with the crisis by taking response measures and conducting post-disaster reconstruction in the face of large-scale disasters.
(4) The DWR has planned to construct a GIS management information system for rainwater and sewage systems, digitizing the data of groundwater and sewage pipelines in Taoyuan City so as to keep track of the pipeline locations and attribute information, and improve the efficiency of the maintenance and management of the sewer systems. In addition, a new notification facility on the “Flood Situation in Taoyuan” app enables citizens to post photos and the location of the disaster, so that disasters happening in the city could be quickly and effectively reported, and then citizens could be informed and make a prompt response, and it has won the 2016 Taoyuan City Government Service Quality Award and the 2017 Taipei Computer Association Smart City Innovative Applications Award.
(5) On the basis of communities, resources inside and outside the community are integrated in an attempt to promote independent disaster prevention communities. With learning of disasters and disaster prevention and rescue-related knowledge and technologies, citizens could be inspired to develop disaster prevention consciousness so as to establish and fulfill a public awareness of disaster control and reduce the impact of floods on people's life. In addition, the city’s Beigui Borough in Pingzhen District received the 2015 Water Resources Agency Assessment Excellence Award.
(6)In order to create a waterfront environment, the DWR has beautified the waterfront environment on the right bank of the Dahan River, regulated the waterfront of the Nankan River in the Taoyuan section and the Laojie River, created a water-friendly environment, greenified the waterfront of the Dakekan River and Green Leisure Park Program, as well as connected bike paths with footpaths between the blue belt and the city, in order to provide an urban leisure, fitness, parent-child space and an comfortable human-based environment.
2. Soil and Water Conservation
(1) In order to satisfy the needs of landslides disaster management and conservation, the erosion and sediment control engineering are conducted in Daxi, Longtan, Yangmei, and Fuxing districts in succession. Moreover, the DWR’s application for the Comprehensive Basin Management Plan for undertaking the regulation works in Taoyuan City government with the Taipei Branch, Soil and Water Conservation Bureau Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan management working together for construction. Furthermore, regarding the funds prepared for the maintenance and management of soil and water conservation of the landslides and hillside-related disasters in the jurisdiction, creeks streams have been dredged, facility maintenance engineering have been carried out, and the surveys of gullies and wild streams have been conducted in Guishan District using the funds. With the establishment of basic information on the situation of current terrain, landslide areas, and the erosion situation through the early survey and figuring out where have debris hazards happened, which is beneficial for the DWR to strive for rectification funds from the central government.
(2) To both develop economic and keep environmental sustainability, the flat terraces of the hillsides is promoted for reasonable use. the DWR has reviewed the delineation project for the hillside range at the Taoyuan City Gong 4th Industrial Park, commissioned a consulting company to conduct a feasibility evaluation survey and explained the survey results to the Gong 4th Industrial Park, as well as assisted the Park per month in pushing the agenda for delineation such as disaster prevention and detention facilities. Furthermore, as the area of the project is adjacent to the edge of the terrace and close to the gully, the DWR has considered the safety of the whole landslides and is currently planning and doing a design for five gullies with headward erosion, and has obtained a subsidy for rectification of two gullies from the Council of Agriculture’s Soil and Water Conservation Bureau. And the DWR will continue to seek subsidies.
3. Sewage Treatment
(1) To accelerate the construction of sewage systems in Taoyuan City, the DWR has been actively cooperating with the central government’s “Sewage System Construction Plan Phase Five,” with the promotion using state-run and private participation modes. The state-run mode consists of the Guishan System, Daxi System, Shimen System, Fuxing System, and Yangmei System while the private participation mode comprises the Taoyuan System, Zhongli System, and Puding System. Apart from that, construction of the Taoyuan Airport MRT A7 Station System will be conducted and the aerotropolis transport center system will be taken over. Moreover, as the Xinwu and Guanyin systems and the Longtan, Pingzhen, and Shanzihding systems have been planned, the DWR are striving for approval of the plan by the central government. Through multi-pronged strategies, the Taoyuan City’s sewage systems can be more complete, with river pollution lessened, water quality improved, and the function of the river ecosystem maintained.
(2) The percentage of sewerage household connection in Taoyuan city is aimed at increasing up to 60%, and the connecting work has been promoted under the condition of traffic being light and safe. To increase citizens’ willingness for cooperating with the sewerage connecting engineering, not only the ground surface in the back lane is renewed during the engineering, but the environment of the back lane is also reconstructed. So far, the renewal and reconstructing engineering have done in Daxi and Longtan district to be a demonstration.
(3) The water reclamation center governed by the DWR, by upgrading the function and updating the equipment year by year, has maintained well the processing efficiency of each sewage plant. For water reuse, the sewage plant is fitted with equipment for reclaiming water, which is used to water plants in the factory area and clean the ground to reduce the use of tap water. In terms of operation, the operating manufacturer are strictly required to adjust and operate the mechanical equipment running power and the running period according to various conditions, and improve the automation control year by year to achieve the goal of intelligent energy saving.