Taiwan’s Tap Water: A Century of Engineering and the Anxiety of Drought

30-Second Overview: Between 1885 and 1890, Taipei already saw attempts at public water supply involving well-digging, filtration, and disinfection. The 1907 Shuanghsi River source project brought modern tap water into the city. Since the post-war era, Taiwan’s nationwide water supply coverage rate has risen from approximately 10% to 93.1% in 2013, but water has not thereby become something that "naturally appears." Today’s tap is still connected to intake points, water treatment plants, tens of thousands of kilometers of pipelines, cross-regional transfers, and the trade-offs made during every drought.

Before Turning on the Tap

In 2024, the Feitsui Reservoir raw water tunnel was flowing. Over a hundred years ago, Taipei was still figuring out how to get cleaner water for its people. The preserved Caoshan Waterworks System and the Tap Water Museum ensure that this infrastructure history exists not just in timelines, but in buildings and pipes you can walk up to and observe. Records from the Taipei Water and Sewerage Bureau note that the Tap Water Museum officially opened to the public in 2000, and in 2021, activities such as "Exploring Good Water" brought the Caoshan Waterworks heritage back into urban life. ¹

The Taipei Water and Sewerage Bureau lists the well-digging, filtration, and disinfection work undertaken within the city during the Liu Mingchuan era (1885–1890) as the inception of Taipei’s public water supply. In 1907, the construction of the Shuanghsi River source project began, providing the modern water supply sector with the skeleton necessary for sustained expansion. ¹

This starting point is well-suited to dismantling a habitual imagination: tap water is not merely a pipe installed next to a water source, but the infrastructure that turns water into the foundation of urban communal life. Water must be extracted, treated, measured, stored, pressurized, and then delivered into every house. If any single segment of this process fails, the tap is reduced to nothing more than a metal handle.

📝 Curator’s Note: The public infrastructure we most easily overlook is often the one that succeeds every day, and thus is never seen.

Image: Shuanghsi Water Pipe Bridge, by Ianbu, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Images are not downloaded; the article embeds them via external hotlinks.

How an Island Delivers Water to Homes

In the early post-war period, Taiwan’s nationwide tap water coverage rate was approximately 10%. Historical compilations from the Water Resources Agency show that coverage rose to 78% in 1980, 90% in 1990, and reached 93.1% in 2013. This is not the achievement of a single water plant, but the cumulative result of decades of expansion, consolidation, and pipeline extension. ²

After the Nationalist government relocated to Taiwan in 1949, Taiwan’s water supply system first faced war damage rather than a pre-prepared modern water network. Records from the Water Resources Agency indicate that, with funding from U.S. aid, the government began repairing 77 rural water supply systems by the end of 1949 (Republic of China Year 38), completing the work by May 1950 (Republic of China Year 39), thereby restoring output and the number of served residents to pre-war levels. ³

This history contains a turning point easily obscured by daily life. Today’s tap may look like a prop from Doraemon, appearing to be plugged into the wall so that water flows simply by turning it. In reality, water supply work after the government’s relocation to Taiwan began with repairs, followed by the renovation of local urban facilities, subsidies for rural water supply, and long-term construction by the Engineering General Corps and the Public Works Bureau, gradually moving toward a regional water supply network. The 77 rural systems repaired in 1949 are estimated to have benefited 190,000 people. In 1952, the Provincial Government established the Engineering General Corps, which was expanded into the Public Works Bureau in 1958, giving water supply an organization capable of being driven forward by annual plans and public budgets. ⁴

This does not mean restarting Taiwan’s tap water history from 1949. The Japanese colonial period had already left behind waterways and water treatment facilities; the post-war government’s work included repair, expansion, integration, and redistribution. Viewing the tap as a Doraemon prop is interesting not because it mocks that imagination, but because it reveals the invisible pipeline behind the wall, connected by countless engineering decisions.

📝 Curator’s Note: After the Kuomintang came to Taiwan, water did not suddenly appear from the wall. First, people repaired the 77 systems damaged by war; only then did the tap you thought was "always there" exist.

In 1963, a World Health Organization expert team visited Taiwan to study water supply construction and development plans. In 1974, the Taiwan Provincial Government transformed previously scattered local water supply systems into large-scale and regional systems, merging 128 water plants across the province to establish the Taiwan Water Corporation. Local water plants were placed into a larger network, shifting water supply from a matter for individual towns to cross-regional governance. ²

This consolidation also changed the meaning of "water shortage." Shortage is not just a lack of rain; it can also be a loss of balance between supply and demand in a specific area. Water engineering can store water from the wet season for the dry season, while pipelines allow different systems to support each other. Water experts point out that not all water usage in Taiwan comes from reservoirs; river diversions and groundwater are also part of the supply structure. ⁵

Water Plants Are Not the End; Pipelines Are the Daily Reality

The Taiwan Water Corporation’s statistical yearbooks break down water supply into a fully trackable system: sources and output, served population and coverage rate, sales volume, water treatment and storage facilities, pipeline length, and capacity analysis for various pipelines. The table of contents for this yearbook may seem administrative, yet it reveals the truest face of tap water—it is not a product, but a series of public assets requiring maintenance. ⁶

Taiwan Water currently maintains nationwide supply through 141 water supply systems and manages 486 water treatment plants of various types. In its sustainability data, the company acknowledges that some water treatment plants have been operating for many years with aging equipment, leading to plans for the modernization of 21 plants. As of the end of 2024, 6 plants had been completed. ⁷

Even when water reaches the water treatment plant, it has not yet arrived home. The turbidity of raw water can rise dramatically in a short period due to typhoons and heavy rainfall, increasing the difficulty and cost of treatment. Treated water must then pass through transmission mains, distribution reservoirs, pumping stations, and alleyway pipelines. This is why water safety cannot be judged solely at the plant exit; the pipe network, community water towers, and household endpoints are equally the final segment.

📝 Curator’s Note: The "cleanliness" of a cup of water is not stamped by a single instrument, but by the fact that no link in the chain pushes responsibility to the next.

Image: City-designated Heritage Caoshan Waterworks System Aqueduct, by Deepblue5042, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Images are not downloaded; the article embeds them via external hotlinks.

When Drought Strikes, Where Does the Water Come From?

The 2021 water shortage experience made the image of "how much is left in the reservoir" familiar to the public, but experts remind us that reservoir storage levels cannot be equated alone with whether an area will face shortages. Rainfall, river flow, inflow rates, days of available water, and the dispatching between different water usage targets all affect water situation assessments. ⁵

During the prolonged drought in southern Taiwan in 2023, Public Television’s Our Island documented that the Shimen Reservoir storage rate dropped to approximately 11.3%, and the Nanhua Reservoir to 38.45%. Kaohsiung sought alternative solutions through pressure-reduced water supply, reclaimed water, phreatic water, and drought-resistant wells. These measures do not "create" water; they redistribute water that was originally outside the domestic tap water system through engineering and management. ⁸

Reclaimed water particularly clearly illustrates this shift. Research indicates that Taiwan faced an average annual water demand shortfall of approximately 530.6 million cubic meters between 2011 and 2019. Consequently, the government views reclaimed water as an important new source for industrial water, setting a supply target of 1.32 million cubic meters per day by 2031. The Fengshan Reclaimed Water Plant has supplied treated water to steel manufacturing processes, while the Yongkang plant serves the semiconductor and display panel industries. ⁹

Here is an unintuitive result: when facing shortages, it is not necessarily the household tap that is first redesigned, but the sources of industrial water. Cities must maintain both daily life and industry. Thus, water supply policy is not only asking "where is the water," but also "which kind of water should be sent where." For households, this may involve water pressure and outage times. For industry, it is whether reclaimed water can stably meet process needs. Both demands share the same island’s hydrological conditions, making water engineering simultaneously industrial policy and livelihood policy.

Where Water Comes From Determines Who Must Guard It

The upstream of water supply is not an abstract "reservoir catchment area," but a watershed with farmland, factories, settlements, and roads. A 2026 data investigation by The Reporter overlaid data from 245 surface water intake points and protection zones with pollution penalty records, finding that nearly one-quarter of intake points had no designated tap water quality and quantity protection zones upstream. Over the past five years, at least 381 factories upstream of intake points had been penalized for violations of relevant environmental regulations. ¹⁰

This does not mean every penalized factory had already polluted drinking water, nor does it mean water treatment plants lack processing capacity. It points to another, more difficult problem: if raw water is polluted, the city must invest more in monitoring, patrols, chemicals, and treatment equipment. If upstream residents are restricted in land use due to protection zones, who bears the conservation costs?

The Reporter’s investigation also noted that tap water quality and quantity protection zones and drinking water source quality protection zones are managed by different systems, with varying scopes and intensities of control. As a river flows from upstream to the intake point, administrative boundaries and regulatory divisions do not disappear with the water, requiring clearer designs for responsibility and compensation in governance. ¹⁰

📝 Curator’s Note: The fairness of water resources occurs not only by the tap, but also when upstream land is required to be given up.

The Water Lost and the Invisible Costs

A Public Television report citing Taiwan Water data indicated that in 2022, Taiwan’s nationwide tap water leakage rate was 13.10%, meaning approximately 420 million tons of water were lost before reaching users, an amount equivalent to the storage capacity of two Shimen Reservoirs. The report also noted that reducing the leakage rate to below 10% would require substantial public investment in pipeline replacement. ⁸

Leakage is not simply "carelessness by the water company." Old pipelines cross roads, bridges, densely populated residential areas, and other underground utilities. Updating them involves traffic, funding, construction space, and coordination of water outages. The less visible the pipeline, the less attention it receives in daily politics. Yet every burst pipe, pressure reduction, and outage suddenly brings it back to the center of life.

Taiwan Water lists reducing the leakage rate, building backup pipelines, strengthening cross-system dispatching, and modernizing water treatment plants as key points of water supply management. The company also states that the water quality compliance rate is 99.94%, and the compliance rate for health-impacting substances is 100%. These figures can explain the management results of water leaving the plant, but they cannot endorse the water towers, pipelines, and filtration equipment inside homes. Between the public system and the private end, there remains a distance that users must maintain themselves. ⁷

After the Earthquake, How Does Water Return?

Water supply resilience is tested not only during droughts. Taiwan Water’s official English records note that the 2024 Hualien earthquake damaged multiple water supply facilities, affecting over 120,000 households. Taiwan Water activated its emergency center and repair plans, restoring nationwide water supply within 86 hours. This number will quickly fade from the news, but for households without water, 86 hours is a period requiring the rearrangement of drinking, washing, caregiving, and work. ¹¹

Therefore, backup pipelines, disaster-prevention groundwater wells, emergency vital water supply stations, and cross-regional dispatching are not a backup list irrelevant to daily supply. Their value only becomes apparent when disaster strikes, provided they were built and tested beforehand. The reliability of the tap water system relies on placing the worst-case scenarios into routine budgets and maintenance plans.

📝 Curator’s Note: True resilience is not being good at fixing things after a disaster, but having people willing to pay for invisible backups before the disaster occurs.

The Public Nature of a Single Drop

Taiwan Water’s 50th-anniversary English message describes the rise in water supply coverage from less than 50% to over 95%, listing pipeline extension, cross-regional dispatching, water treatment plant modernization, and leakage rate improvement as the next stage of work. This English page unexpectedly clarifies the nature of tap water: it provides not just water, but a way for society to connect public welfare and economic development to every household. ¹¹

But public nature does not mean always free, nor does it mean every place receives the same service. Water experts have argued that basic living water should consider fairness, while industrial water should be designed with water-saving incentives. Dispatching during droughts should also incorporate ecological environments and third-party losses into the rules. Water prices, protection zone compensation, industrial water, agricultural water, and household needs will ultimately meet in the same water supply system. ⁵

Thus, what is truly worth remembering when turning on the tap is not "Taiwan finally has water," but that this action still requires a society to continue paying. The 1885 wells, the 1907 Shuanghsi River source, the 1974 consolidated nationwide network, the 2021 drought dispatching, and today’s reclaimed water and pipeline updates are all different eras of the same thing: turning unstable nature into a system for communal living.

Next time water flows from the tap, you need not think of it as a miracle. Think of it as a public contract signed anew every day: upstream areas willing to protect, engineering willing to maintain, government willing to disclose, industry willing to save water, and users willing to know where this drop comes from and whose land it may cost.

Further Reading

• Taipei Tap Water Museum and Waterway History
• Ministry of Economic Affairs Water Resources Agency: Water Resource Management and Water Supply Conservation
• Taiwan Water Corporation: Water Use Promotion and Leakage Prevention

Images and Licenses

This article uses two freely licensed images from Wikimedia Commons, embedded via remote hotlinks without downloading or copying image files. Both images are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). If republishing the images, please retain the author’s name, file page link, and license link; if modifying, clearly indicate the changes.

• Shuanghsi Water Pipe Bridge, by Ianbu. Image hotlink: Original File. License: CC BY-SA 4.0.
• Aqueduct Crossing Time, by Deepblue5042. Image hotlink: Original File. License: CC BY-SA 4.0.

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