JOHOR BARU: The long-awaited cloud seeding operation to restore water levels at the Sungai Layang and Sungai Lebam dams in Johor began today.
Tubes of ioidise salt, a compound used in the rain-making process were flown on a Cessna 340 aircraft from the Senai International airport at around 1pm.
Johor Water Regulatory Body (Bakaj) said the cloud seeding operation will involve a total of 20 scheduled flights in the next 20 days.
Newly-appointed Bakaj director Mohd Riduan Md Ali said in a statement that the cloud-seeding process will take almost three hours during each flight.
"We are confident we can carry out the 20 cloud seeding flights until the end of the month. The focus is to produce rain over dams with critically low water levels, such as Sungai Layang and Sungai Lebam dams. The operation also involves other dams in Machap, Chongok, Juaseh and Sembrong," he said.
Mohd Riduan said the entire cloud seeding operation, which was initiated by the state government had obtained co-operation from the Department of Civil Aviation, Malaysian Meteorological Department and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore.
Since earlier this month, efforts have been in place to restore the low levels at the affected dams to complement the cloud seeding operation.
A 500m long pipe stretching from Sungai Tiram to Sungai Johor has been built to transfer about 35 million litres of water from Sungai Tiram to Sungai Johor in effort to maintain the Sungai Johor water level.
The state government has also extended the water rationing exercise affecting three districts to Nov 15. The rationing was to optimise water reserves in the Sungai Layang and Sungai Lebam dams.
This is the third time that the water rationing exercise was extended.
It has affected consumers in Pasir Gudang, Masai and parts of Johor Baru as well as the Tanjung Surat, Pantai Timur and Pengerang subdistricts in Kota Tinggi.
It was previously reported that the Sungai Layang dam, which channels raw water into the Sultan Iskandar Water Treatment Plant (WTP), supplies water to almost 600,000 consumers in Pasir Gudang, Masai and parts of Johor Baru.
The Sungai Lebam dam in Kota Tinggi, which supplies raw water to the Sungai Lebam WTP provides water supply to about 65,000 users in Pengerang, Bandar Penawar and Felda Air Tawar in Kota Tinggi.