Public Works Department, Taipei City Government

As one necessary financial resource of managing and maintaining the sewage piping system, the sewerage charge has been paid by a user since 1983 based on the principle of user employment. Thus far, according to the formula stipulated in “Taipei City’s Sewerage Charge Collection Regulations”, the standard for this sewerage charge has been NTD 5 per cubic meter of tap water consumed since 1998, which is cheap enough comparatively. To prevent citizens from extra loading, this standard has been unchanged for 10 years.

Obviously, this unadjusted standard has been the root cause of the unbalanced sewerage project. For instance, the anticipated revenue for sewerage charges collected from 840 thousand users having sewers connected or having paid in 2017 was NTD 1270 million which has formed a big gap in finance compared with costs of NTD 3 billion for construction, maintenance and running of the sewage piping system in the same year. In this regard, for the purpose of keeping the sewage piping system’s normal running without endless deterioration in urban environments as well as rivers’ water quality, this financial gap need to be subsidized from the public budget. As a result, with a tradeoff between citizens’ loading and the City Government’s finance, the standard for collection of sewerage charges will be kept continuously.