Protecting the century-old Xizhou irrigation canal means protecting the farming countryside
Photography/ Chen Ning
Xizhou is called by this name because it was originally a sandbar of the Zhuoshui River, a plain gradually formed by alluvial deposits.
Like a mother, the Zhuoshui River gave this farming village on its banks fertile land. A hundred years ago, the ancestors of the Qing era diverted water from Dazhuang Village in Xizhou Township and set up the first officially established irrigation canal, the Cizihpi Canal. Not only did it gradually reduce the suffering caused by floods, but the canal water irrigated not just Xizhou, it also nourished crops in Erlin, Pitou, Zhutang, Fangyuan and other places.
Besides the famous Zhuoshui rice, Xizhou also produces guavas, a variety of vegetables and flowers, and the Malabar chestnut (Pachira aquatica) seedlings commonly known as the "money tree," making it an important agricultural hub in southern Changhua.
But the farming village is not calm.
As industry expands, the pace of development has slowly moved from the cities to the surroundings of the farming villages. To defend their land and water sources, farmers have stood up in the streets to shout, again and again.
Insatiable Demands: Industry Grabs Farm Water
On August 7, under the scorching heat of summer, at the water source of the Cizihpi Canal in Dazhuang Village, Xizhou Township, a huge banner reading "Protect Water" was hung up. Nearly a thousand local residents, along with young students and citizens who had come to show solidarity, filled the area around the water source, jointly declaring their determination to protect the water.
As early as 2002, after the completion of the Jiji Weir, large amounts of water from the Zhuoshui River were supplied to the Mailiao Sixth Naphtha Cracker Industrial Zone at a rate of 300,000 to 400,000 tons per day, and the Cizihpi Canal began implementing a "four days on, six days off" schedule: the canal supplied water only four days out of every ten.
This was not the worst case. In the Central Taiwan Science Park Phase 4 development project, the Cizihpi Canal was actually planned as a "mid-term water supply source." Without the farmers knowing anything about it, and based solely on a simple pipeline diagram in the environmental impact assessment report, the farm water was thus sold off by the irrigation association to the Central Taiwan Science Park Phase 4, with a planned daily "allocation" of 66,500 tons, until the year 104 of the Republic of China (2015).
But with the suspension of the Kuokuang Petrochemical project, the original "long-term water supply" source, the Dadu Weir, also fell through. With the long-term water source completely unsettled, the water of the Cizihpi Canal faced the crisis of being seized by industry.
An old farmer in Xizhou said, "Rice, rice, only with water is there rice, only with rice is there food, only with food is there life!" Since the "four days on, six days off" schedule was implemented, if farmers grow vegetables, fruits and other crops relatively more drought-tolerant than rice, they can still manage to hold on. But rice needs fresh water irrigated into the paddies every three or four days, otherwise it will turn yellow and wither. Farmers had no choice but to pay out of their own pockets to hire people to drill wells and draw groundwater, and it is not as the Changhua County Irrigation Association claims, that they draw groundwater because they are "too lazy to watch over the water in the middle of the night."
Worshipping Heaven and Earth, Resolute in Protecting Water
An altar was set up at the water source. The farmers used crops irrigated by the Zhuoshui River water to worship heaven and earth, and Xie Baoyuan, chairman of the Anti-Central Taiwan Science Park Water-Grabbing Self-Rescue Association, recited a prayer.
"We want to protect the water, let it flow across every inch of the island's land, from sky to earth, from mountains to sea. We want our children and grandchildren, generation after generation, to hear the sound of water flowing into the canals and into the fields. We oppose anyone seizing the water source, or selling off water rights. We want to protect the Cizihpi Canal, and we do not want the Central Taiwan Science Park to grab the water, nor the irrigation association to sell it..."
This prayer, written by Liao Pen-chuan, a professor at National Taipei University, was powerful and resounding in every word. Read aloud in Uncle Baoyuan's sincere and down-to-earth voice, it moved everyone present.
Two days before the water-protection action, the Changhua Farmland Irrigation Association had held an information session in Erlin Township. At the venue, local representatives supporting the project lined up in a row, speaking of the vision of the project and development, while outside the venue were hung slogans such as "Grabbing water is simply taking back the 63% of water that flows into the sea." The people opposing the water diversion project, however, were blocked from entering, and were even told that if they wanted to enter, they could not carry any banners or slogans.
Since residents along the Cizihpi Canal formed a self-rescue association and began protesting the implementation of the water diversion project, the irrigation association subsequently held several information sessions like this one in the area, sessions that could not even be defined procedurally and that in practice failed to achieve any communicative effect. Water is no longer just water. Water is also entangled with local forces and factions...
It is precisely for this reason that the residents who could come forward in today's canal-protection action to express their feelings through concrete action seem all the more valuable. Everyone together pressed their fingerprints onto a banner bearing three characters for "water," and the farmers' firm resolve to defend their homeland strengthened the determination of the young students who had come from all over Taiwan to show solidarity, to protect the canal and the farming village.
This water battle has only just begun.