The Council of Agriculture said that in order to maintain the water quality for agriculture production and to ensure crop quality, under the assistance of the Council, the Irrigation Association has completed a Water Quality Monitoring System after one year’s efforts. It is a timely web system which has integrated the sixty-nine thousand kilometers of irrigation and drainage channels’ 6,918 water quality monitoring sites. Additionally, it provides an instant maintaining water quality for agriculture use, which was about 10.6 billion cubic meters each year. The system can ensure water quality for crop’s production, and elevate management efficiency.

The COA pointed out that they have started to establish a “Water Quality Monitoring System for the Irrigation “Association” since 2001. It aims to file the irrigation water quality monitoring data, to analyze and manage pollution, to inform abnormal situation, for the following three water management agencies: 15 provincial Irrigation Associations, 13 regional monitoring sites, and 262 local monitoring sites. Last year, the COA actively completed the online operation system equipped with advanced electronic application functions such as standard operation procedures and integrated data analyses both for irrigation and water quality monitoring. At the beginning of the year 2006, the COA further combined the current administrative operation of water quality monitoring and the identification of the source of water pollution with the aforementioned online operation system that has been tested successfully to use the system online. At the same time, the COA will assist and train the staff in each Irrigation Association to operate the system before October. By that time, all Irrigation Associations in the country will be able to use this new system to conduct water quality monitoring, treat the water pollution and to improve the management efficiency and the water quality.

The COA said that the incident of cadmium-polluted rice reported in the Changhua County at the end of June this year has arousal consumers’ panic. According to some reports, the main reason that caused this incident was that the industrial wastewater has polluted the irrigation water,. In the future, the COA will effectively prevent such an incident through the operation of “Water Quality Monitoring System for the Irrigation Association” which provides long-term irrigation water quality monitoring and instant warning mechanism for wastewater emission. These methods would help each Irrigation Association immediately monitor and inform related agencies of the instant situation of the water quality and effectively reduce the happening of these water pollution incidents.

The COA stressed that because of the yearly increase in national incomes, there has been a growing concern for the safety and quality of the agricultural products by the public. Recently, the COA advocates a new agriculture movement, with the goal of establishing production and marketing information system for the quality agriculture products, preset to complete in 2015. In this movement, the water quality for agriculture production use is also a great concern. Finally, the COA emphasis that through assisting the Irrigation Associations manage the water quality via this established Water Quality Monitoring System, the farmers’ and consumers’ rights can be effectively protected.