Chinese New Year First Trip: Kaohsiung's Three Reservoirs

Stopped at Agongdian reservoir first today, but air wasn't good, so went down to Cheng Ching Lake and got lucky; then headed down to Fongshan reservoir and got lucky again ridding myself of a long-standing problem to solve: photographing the fountainhead water intake. Will write stuff to accompany these images later - I'm pushed for time now.

Later...

The only thing I was sure about where I wanted to go for Chinese New Year, was that I wanted to avoid the trains. So I'm limited to southern Taiwan. I could conceivably go to the Yushan National Park to look for eagles, and I might do that later when I can get up early enough. Yesterday I again woke up too late, and found myself with insufficient time to do anything serious, so eventually I decided to head south to Kaohsiung as I have a few loose ends to tie up there. First stop was Agongdian reservoir, but the haze was bad, so I left it and took the 186 straight down to my old patch in Niaosong district, Kaohsiung.

When you live close to a place and are quite familiar with it, you tend not to make it a destination and to pay too much attention to it - thus it was with me and Cheng Ching Lake, as I used to live just down the road from here. There have been a few changes over the years; presumably in order to quell parents' fears of their bicycle riding children falling into the lake, additional metal restraints have been installed surmounting the original, chest-height wall that surrounds the eastern half of the lake. Otherwise the baseball stadium, palm trees, villas and apartment buildings are all still how I remember them...

One thing I had known for a long time, but hadn't followed up on (one of my "loose ends") was that Cheng Ching Lake was fed by underground pipe from a treatment center in Dashu district, which in turn receives its water from the intake on the Kaoping river. Where exactly the water entered into the lake was what I didn't know - until today. After taking pictures around the perimeter I approached the gates of the Water Corporation's 7th Branch hoping to scrounge a few pamphlets, but instead the guard just let me in without a word. So I drove in and found the answer to my question... there are in fact two fountainhead water intakes through which water is delivered (and thereby aerated) to the lake. The concrete sculpture in the background next to the second fountainhead is just ornamental...

In this shot below, taken earlier from the eastern perimeter of the lake, you can see that ornamental sculpture in the background to the right with the second fountainhead just in front of it - I had somehow missed this detail. In the foreground of the image is what seems to be a floating shelf, topped with several potted plants which is an oddity...

Back inside the 7th Branch premises, here is a close up shot of the old concrete sculpture - it is at least thirty years old because I later found out from a Taiwanese friend that he remembers it from when he was a small boy...

The lake also had a sectioned off area for the deposition of sediments, which will have to be removed. If they cannot be sold to the construction industry, then money will have to be spent to dump them at sea. The amount of sediment on the lower reaches of the Kaoping river is probably several orders of magnitude greater than what can be seen here.

I spent some time talking to several of the 7th Branch chiefs, including a retiree, who were there with their wives having a picnic. I asked about permission to visit and photograph the fountainhead intake at Fongshan reservoir in Xiaogang, which I have wanted to capture for a long time. They were all in favour of letting me do so, but I gathered that the premises on which they could offer such a permit were restricted to civil engineering graduate students and employees of relevant companies. The old man instead advised me on another way to get the photographs. I took my leave from them sometime after 4pm and decided to head on down to Xiaogang and try my luck. Unlike most other reservoirs in Taiwan, visiting times at Fongshan reservoir are restricted to two time windows per day, with the second one beginning at 5pm. When I arrived I found, as I had expected, that the old man's advice was useless, and so I contented myself to walk down the regular path with everyone else to get some sunset pictures...

On the way down however, I discovered something: a path had been cut through the trees in order to transport massive pipe sections on truck (the V intersection at the top of the road must have been too tight to allow a long vehicle turn). That path led through the trees and directly onto the "forbidden" road and onto the bridge from which I could see the fountainhead. The reason access is restricted is that on the other side of that bridge lies a complex of buildings for Taipower which must have some basic security. I was not interested in that however.

The faded sign giving the vital statistics of Fongshan reservoir - the volumetric capacity is between eight and nine million cubic meters, which is similar in size to Baihe reservoir (i.e. on the smallish end of the scale).

The fountainhead, it is something like twelve meters tall...

At a distance from across the bridge with the sun going down at about 5.30pm...