KUALA LUMPUR: An expert believes that the Langat 2 Treatment Plant, when it is completed by 2022, can play a significant role in resolving the Klang Valley's perennial water woes.
Association of Water and Energy Research Malaysia (Awer) president S. Piarapakaran said the plant can ensure that the Klang Valley has at least 20 per cent in water reserves for emergencies when other treatment plants experience a shutdown, such as on Sunday when the Sungai Semenyih and Bukit Tampoi treatment plants had to cease operations.
He said this was crucial, especially as this was the second major case of water pollution to affect Selangor in more than a month.
"Currently, we cannot have a backup because the installation of the connecting and distribution pipes for the Langat 2 project was delayed by around two years at the end of last year.
"These pipes would channel the reserves to affected reservoirs."
He said that once the pipes were laid, the Langat 2 treatment plant would also be taking over a portion of the service areas of overloaded plants.
This would allow the plants to have their own reserves, he said.
Piarapakaran said at present, the reserve rates against the demand of about 4,800 million litres of water a day were "close to zero".
"If the Sungai Semenyih and Bukit Tampoi treatment plants, which cater to a demand of around 546 and 31.5 million litres of water per day, respectively, are shut down, despite it making up around 12 per cent of the overall demand, we still don't have any reserves."
He said the reserve situation was no different to when all four water treatment plants in Sungai Selangor and Rantau Panjang had to be shut down last month due to the detection of odour and pollutants upstream.
He noted that any backup infrastructure outside expediting the completion of the Langat 2 treatment plant would not be feasible.
The Selangor government had previously announced the Hybrid Off-River Augmentation System, which uses water from abandoned mining ponds as a backup and to dissolve pollutants in water treatment plants, in the event of a supply disruption.
He said as the infrastructure was not yet in place, the best that the state and federal agencies could do was create a dossier of factories and outfits, legal and otherwise.
Piarapakaran stressed that there should be no delay in amending the Environment Quality Act and the Water Services Industry Act 2006.
This, Piarapakaran said, would give the government more muscle to sue polluters for the damage and disruption to the economy, environment and people's lives.