Ecological Flood-Detention Mechanisms in Shulin Village, Guanyin, Taoyuan: Disaster Prevention and Community Economy Moving Forward Together

Text / Ke Ya-chih (Project Researcher, Rural Development Foundation)

"People say that those who live by the mountains eat from the mountains, but it turns out that we who live by the sea end up eating windblown sand." Wu Chin-chang, chief of Shulin Village in Guanyin District, Taoyuan, said with a wry smile. Shulin Village is located on the coast of northwestern Taoyuan. Of the village's total area of 680 hectares, 400 to 500 hectares belong to the Guanyin Industrial Zone, with only a little farmland and housing clinging close together.

Yet this scene today is not what Shulin Village originally looked like. The Guanyin District, which once grew rice and watermelons on a large scale, saw its farming affected in earlier years by sulfur dioxide emissions from the Linkou Thermal Power Plant. Then, due to a policy relocating residents who had originally lived in the Amuping area near Shihmen Reservoir, a large stretch of coastal windbreak forest in Shulin Village was removed for residential use, and the strong sea winds also made it difficult for crops to grow.

Amid the trend of industrialization, the agricultural landscape gradually turned into concrete buildings. Young people left their hometowns to work, and field after field of fallow farmland became weed-choked wasteland, soon followed by red imported fire ants and wild rodents.

Is fallow farmland a problem or an opportunity? Creatively building a giant rainwater storage jar on the land

Faced with the environmental problems caused by fallow farmland and the local need for industrial transformation, Shulin Village, after going through manpower training under the Rural Regeneration Plan and learning about concepts such as "aquaponics" and "rainwater storage jars" as simple household environmental facilities in the Low-Carbon Eco-Neighborhood Program, had a flash of inspiration from the village chief and community partners: "Why don't we just use this land to make a giant version of aquaponics plus a rainwater storage jar?"

So in ROC year 106, the community used NT$70,000 in project funds to build its first demonstration ecological flood-detention pond. The site was chosen next to the section where the community's waterways converge and where flooding had historically been most likely. The abandoned farmland was dug deeper, the earthen embankment was widened and raised, and pipes were laid, turning it into a giant pond. In normal times, it can store water for use during droughts; lotuses planted in the pond are ornamental, while snakehead fish or koi are also stocked to solve the problem of golden apple snails. When heavy rain is forecast, the pond's water level is lowered in advance to catch rainwater, effectively mitigating the flooding disasters caused by intense rainfall over a short period.

Because it does not require large construction expenditures and can both reuse idle land and reduce flooding problems, and because growing lotuses requires relatively little manpower and is more economically beneficial than receiving fallow farmland subsidies, more and more landowners are willing to provide land for ecological flood-detention ponds. At present, the community's flood-detention ponds cover a total area of 8.8 hectares, with a maximum water storage capacity of 79,200 cubic meters.

Community mutual aid and regional joint defense: facing floods together is the solution

The community-built flood-control measures can operate smoothly only because of the combined efforts of many people. Shulin Village has accumulated more than ten years of community energy. Starting with the establishment of the "Community Watch and Mutual Aid Team," it was followed by the formation of the "Xianghe Volunteer Team," which serves community elders, and the "Environmental Protection Volunteer Team," which handles garbage problems in the living area. In recent years, the "Water Environment Patrol Team," "Coastal Patrol Team," and "Air Pollution Patrol Association" have also joined, forming a volunteer team of more than 200 people, all incorporated into the community's self-organized disaster prevention groups. In normal times, they regularly patrol river conditions and clear silt and garbage from drainage ditches. When the weather bureau forecasts torrential rain, the self-organized disaster prevention mechanism is activated: some team members begin taking inventory of disaster prevention equipment, while another group