KUALA LUMPUR: As far as Klang Valley's water woes are concerned, history is repeating itself.
It is always the same old story — some irresponsible party dumps effluents into raw water sources and millions of people are left without water.
Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations (Fomca) president Datuk Dr Marimuthu Nadason urged agencies and authorities involved in the supply chain of water regulation and distribution to undertake serious soul-searching over the latest incident involving Sungai Selangor.
He said for starters, the recent crisis reprised a fundamental concern, in that there was a need for sufficient water reserves should a water supply crisis strike again.
Marimuthu said Selangor, through Pengurusan Air Selangor Sdn Bhd (Air Selangor) and its previous concessionaire, Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor Sdn Bhd (Syabas), had been grappling with this problem for decades.
He said this was despite the authorities announcing the Hybrid Off-River Augmentation System (Horas), which uses water from abandoned mining ponds to act as a back-up and dissolve pollution in water sources channelled to water treatment plants, in the event of a supply disruption.
"Selangor and Kuala Lumpur are the heart of Malaysia's economic growth and possess the biggest population nationwide.
"But they have an extremely slim margin for reserves. They have about one per cent of the average daily demand but they require 30 to 40 per cent (reserve)," he said, drawing on the crisis that had affected more than one million ratepayers and caused taps to run dry in 1,300 areas that on average demand 2,700 million litres of water day.
Marimuthu said Air Selangor also had 700 water tankers to distribute water to 1.2 million account holders to counter the water disruption. He said the firm faced a logistics nightmare in ensuring that water was continuously supplied to consumers.
He said around 30 per cent of the water leaks were due to non-revenue water brought about by old or faulty pipes.
He said companies needed to get rid of the profit-first mentality.
"What we need is a holistic management of the entire supply chain of water resources regulation, management, enforcement and distribution. Do we have the right (qualified) people in charge of the bodies related to the water services industry and the environment? We can't have below-par people running the show."
Marimuthu said this time the water supply disruption could not be swept under the carpet once the supply was restored.
"The authorities and agencies have to come up with thorough plans, including contingencies on strategies over the next weeks, months, and even decades, and execute them so there are fewer such incidents. We (need to) have enough reserves to withstand any water cut due to pollution, rationing, etc."
He said Air Selangor and other related agencies had to work on how to encourage and raise awareness of the need for water harvesting.
On Thursday, Air Selangor halted operations at its Sungai Selangor Water Treatment Plant Phase 1, 2, and 3 and the Rantau Panjang Water Treatment Plant due to industrial effluent pollution. Water supply is expected to be fully restored by 6am on Wednesday.