PETALING JAYA: The Penang Water Supply Corporation (PBAPP) has urged all residents in the state to reduce their water consumption by 10 per cent with immediate effect.
Sparking concerns that the state’s water supply is not safe until rain hits the relevant dams, PBAPP chief executive officer K. Pathmanathan said Penang’s water consumption had reached 927 million liters per day (MLD) on Sunday (March 17) compared to last year’s average total of 877 MLD.
“This shows an increase as high as 50 MLD from year to year.
“The 50 million liters refers to the amount of water enough to fill 20 Olympic-sized swimming pools everyday or 33,333,333 1.5 liter bottles of drinking water,” Pathmanathan said in a statement, adding that the rising water consumption had caused issues in the Barat Daya district and Seberang Perai Selatan.
The data shown in the statement calculated 1,266.3 MLD (2023 average: 1,198 MLD) of treated water in the nine water treatment plants (WTP) while the average water loss in 2023had amounted to 26 per cent.
He further pointed out the Sungai Muda water levels from Thursday (March 14) to Sunday (March 17) were estimated between 1.71 meters (m) to 1.89 m, which is below the safe level of 2.0 m for water abstraction at the Lahar Tiang Intake in Seberang Perai.
Meanwhile, the 120 million liter Muda Dam in Kedah that releases water to Sungai Muda has reported a decrease of 48.6 per cent on Friday (March 15).
“Fortunately, the Beris Dam, which could be the second dam releasing water to Sungai Muda was reported to be at 98.6 per cent on the same day.
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“PBAPP will keep abstracting raw water from Sungai Muda everyday to meet Penang’s water demand,” he said.
He further explained that PBAPP staff will be on standby to release a maximum of 600 MLD of water from the now-expanded Mengkuang Dam, should there be insufficient amounts of water abstracted from Sungai Muda.
In the statement, Pathmanathan also included the effective capacity of the island’s three main dams which are Air Itam Dam (37.3 per cent), Teluk Bahang Dam (73 per cent) and EMD (89.6 per cent).
He noted that the effective capacity of the Air Itam Dam had dropped to 0.8 per cent from 38.1 per cent on March 15 to 37.3 per cent on March 17, adding that PBAPP had to release 11 MLD from the dam and 25 MLD of treated water from the Air Itam WTP.
Pathmanathan also mentioned that since the implementation of the Air Itam Dam Action Plan 2024 (AIDAP 2024) on Feb 2, the dam’s effective capacity rose as much as 4.5 per cent from 32.8 per cent from Feb 2 to 37.7 per cent on Sunday (March 17).
“One of the main factors determining the continuous success of AIDAP 2024 is moderate water usage.
“PBAPP have pumped 33 MLD from the Sungai Dua WTP to the Air Itam water supply service area so that the effective capacity increases gradually.
“However, AIDAP 2024 will cease to function if PBAPP cannot continue pumping 33 MLD of water from Seberang Perai to Air Itam due to astounding amounts of water consumption,” he added.
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