It’s raining but taps may still run dry

Dark clouds forming over the Sungai Selangor dam which is good news for Klang Valley folks. The dam is now at 45% capacity. - KAMARUL ARIFFIN/The Star

PETALING JAYA: Despite the onset of the rainy season in the Klang Valley, taps can still go dry for the nine million residents of Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya.

That is a common complaint that the country’s biggest water distributor has been receiving from consumers of late.

The problem is not the supply of rainwater now filling up the state’s main dam at Sungai Selangor – now over 45% after falling close to the critical 30% in September.

It is the limited capacity of treatment plants to meet the demand for treated water.

The situation has resulted in a worryingly thin reserve margin of treated water that Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor (Syabas) has to rely on should there be instances of raw water pollution, pump house failure, electrical failure, disruption caused by a third party or a sudden long dry spell.

The latest figures from Syabas show the current demand for water in the Klang Valley at 4,567 million litres per day (MLD) while the distributable capacity of the 34 treatment plants is 4,686 MLD.

The reserve margin or difference between supply and demand is a mere 2.6%, a figure that the official described as the Klang Valley’s “thin blue line”.

“The Klang Valley’s water reserve margin is too small, as the comfortable margin needed is between 10% and 20% in order to prevent widespread supply problems due to unscheduled disruptions,” said the official.

Syabas buys treated water from treatment plant operators and distributes it to consumers while the Selangor Water Management Authority (LUAS) is responsible for managing the state’s raw water resources including monitoring rivers for pollution.

The company said it got between 16,000 and 20,000 telephone calls a day from customers during the last unscheduled water disruption between Oct 12 and 16, with many asking why their taps were dry when the rainy season had arrived.

A pollution incident at Sungai Selangor triggered a temporary shutdown of four treatment plants, and a portion of treated water produced by the Sungai Semenyih treatment plant had to be channelled to affected locations in the Petaling district.

This led to a reduction in supply to areas such as Bandar Puteri Puchong which Syabas said was not due, as some had earlier believed, to a pump house failure at the Semenyih dam.

Association of Water and Energy Research Malaysia president S. Piarapakaran said the situation was worrying, similar to having more cars but no additional roads.

“Despite the increase in rainfall, we are not out of the woods yet because the capacity to produce treated water is still limited,” he said.

As measures to boost the supply of treated water – namely the Pahang-Selangor raw water transfer project and the Langat 2 treatment plant – are still not ready, Piarapakaran urged authorities to do more to encourage and promote the use of water-efficient domestic appliances such as washing machines, kitchen faucets and toilets to help consumers conserve water.

Apart from pollution, a sudden long dry spell could also cause or worsen a disruption such as the one earlier this year that led to a two-month long rationing exercise.

A Meteorological Department official said the next dry spell in the Klang Valley was expected to occur in February to March next year, which is during the end of the North-east monsoon season.

This is expected to be followed by another dry season that will take place in mid-May through September due to the South-west monsoon.

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