Taiwan's military will help dredge the sand, mud and driftwood which Typhoon Morakot brought down to southern Taiwan's Tsengwen Reservoir, Water Resources Agency (WRA) Director-General Yang Wei-fu said Friday. According to Yang, some 1.2 billion cubic meters of sand and mud brought about by the storm, which hit Taiwan in August, has built up in the upstream mountainous area. Over 400 million cubic meters of the substance have washed down to the downstream rivers, including Gaoping River, Laonung River and Chisan River. The Laonung River has carried some 91 million cubic meters of the substance and driftwood to the Tsengwen Reservoir, causing a water supply problem and leading to a suspension of irrigation for the first harvest next year on farmland in neighboring Chiayi and Tainan counties, Yang told a news conference. He was speaking to reporters following a meeting of a cross-agency task force which is in charge of the dredging plan. As part of the dredging project, about 65 million cubic meters of sand and mud will be removed from the reservoir upon the project's completion, slated for late November next year, Yang said. Sand and rocks dug out from the reservoir will be used for construction and for filling in land reclaimed from the sea, WRA Deputy Director-General Wu Yueh-si said. Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang presided over the meeting, which was attended by officials from the Ministry of National Defense, the Council of Agriculture, the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, the Ministry of the Interior and the National Science Council, among others. In the long-term, the Executive Yuan has decided to earmark NT$34 billion (US$1.05 billion) to dredge the Tsengwen Reservoir in Chiayi County and the Nanhua Reservoir in Tainan County, Executive Yuan spokesman Su Jun-pin said last week. About NT$26 billion will be allocated to desilt the Tsengwen Reservoir over the next six years and NT$8 billion to clean the Nanhua Reservoir. Tsengwen Reservoir is Taiwan's largest facility of the kind and has an effective storage capacity of 596 million cubic meters. Since Typhoon Morakot, no rain has fallen in southern Taiwan and the two reservoirs have not collected any more water, exacerbating the threat of water shortages. Tainan County Magistrate Su Huan-jhih warned that the water supply problem would develop into a food crisis if the two reservoirs could not be effectively and swiftly dredged, now that the rice cultivation for the coming spring harvest has been halted for a lack of water for irrigation. More frequent of fallows will definitely push up rice prices in Taiwan, which have surged this year, Su said. 