Thursday Morning Dash To Namaxia & Back

A couple of weeks ago, after being banned apparently for questioning the competence of Tainan city's DPP government viz its' garbage collection policies, I noticed that Turton and a couple of friends had taken a bicycle trip to Namaxia in Kaohsiung but that, despite their many photographs of important local features, they had apparently missed something: the two tunnel mouths for the trans-basin water diversion project, half of which was suspended six or seven years ago. Of course, when I kindly pointed this out to Turton himself I got a volley of abuse in reply.

But then Michael Turton is what you might call "a cunning stunt".

Anyway, it had been about a year since I had last visited the area and it got me wondering whether the western tunnel had been completed yet and what work, if any, had been done to build another weir and the associated infrastructure to feed water into the pipeline to be housed in the tunnel. For now and the next couple of weeks I can enjoy my mornings off which gives me time to do other things besides work, so this morning I woke up at 4 a.m., sent a message to Karen and we left at 6 a.m. and arrived on site at just before 8 a.m. I only took a couple of pictures...

There had been considerable growth among the bushes and reeds since I was last here, and this was the only view across the river to the western tunnel's east entrance I could find: one decorated with power cables.

Curiously, a wooden fence perhaps fifteen feet high had been erected in front of the tunnel mouth. I cannot yet fathom what the purpose of this is; it cannot possibly be intended to hide the tunnel from public view as there are eight sign posts above it, and it is unlikely to function as a door or cover to protect the tunnel mouth because it is set several feet in front of the tunnel. 

Although we arrived at just before 8 a.m., I wasn't too keen on hanging around for long because I would need to get back to Tainan city with plenty of time to spare before work in the afternoon. I did however, have half a mind to drive through Namaxia and follow the river further upstream to look for signs of any new construction for a weir and entrapment pen. But if I had find something I knew I would not have been able to resist the temptation to spend more and more time there, which could ruin the rest of the day. Moreover, I would have expected either Turton or his friend Andrew Kerslake to have featured photographs of any such new construction if there had been any on their blogs (neither of them did). So I decided it was unlikely, and that it would be better to leave further photography for another time.