While weathermen are alerting people to possible damage by the approaching Typhoon Morakot, the Shihmen Reservoir Agency is hoping that the storm will bring torrential rains that will help relieve the long dry spell at the 45-year- old dam. Agency director Chiu Chung-chuan said Wednesday that the water level at the reservoir had fallen to a critical 222.64 meters, although 7.5 million tons was collected Tuesday during the heavy showers. In recent years, the water levels at the Shihmen Reservoir have fallen to alarming lows in summer, according to Chien chao-chun, deputy director of the Northern Region Water Resources Office. Originally designed mainly to supply water for irrigation in the Taoyuan region, the reservoir now supplies households, farms, and a fast growing industrial sector in the area. The population in the Taoyuan area has grown three-fold, from 500,000 in the 1960s to 1.8 million recently, and daily household consumption of water has increased from 110,000 tons to 1.2 million tons, Chien said. He added that even as industrial pollution has contaminated many underground water resources and farmers are relying heavily on the reservoir for irrigation, its capacity has dropped considerably because many parts of the old dam have silted up. The reservoir's storage capacity nowadays is 25 percent less than the 680,000 cubic meters it was originally designed to hold, Chien estimated. The water resources official said that as rainfall and other sources are not sufficient to maintain an adequate storage level, the ultimate solution is to develop new resources. 