KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Water Association (MWA) has clarified that the recent statements made by both the Selangor government and Federal government on the state's zero water reserve margin was actually figures for 2016.
MWA president Datuk Abdul Kadir Mohd Din clarified that the statements made by both parties referencing the Malaysia Water Industry Guide (MWIG) 2017 was inaccurate.
“The water reserve margin that is referred here in the MWIG is on treated water supply and not on the raw water resources. The references made by both the Ministry of Energy, Green Technology, and Water and Selangor government in their recent statements are actually the figures for year 2016.
“Hence, the MWA need to emphasise that any reference to 2017 and 2018 are not found in the latest edition of MWIG 2017 which was published in
the middle of 2017,” Abdul Kadir said in a statement to the NSTP here today.
Abdul Kadir was commenting on a statement by the ministry's secretarygeneral Datuk Seri Dr Zaini Ujang earlier this week who said that the water
reserve margin in Selangor in 2017 was at zero per cent and was identified as among the main factors behind the state’s water problems.
He added the MWIG contained statistics and analysis of key information of water supply and sewerage services collected over the year that were of
strategic importance for the purposes of analysis.
Abdul Kadir said Selangor's total water treatment plant design capacity for 2016 was 4,606 million litres per day (MLD) whereas the average total
average daily production (or current demand) is 4,807 MLD.
“If, based on the baseline on total design capacity, Selangor will have 0 per cent reserve margin for the year concerned.
“However, for Selangor, we have added a footnote to explain further due to the special and extenuating circumstances surrounding the water supply
in Selangor,” he said.
He said for Selangor, the reserve margin was also calculated based on the total distributable capacity.
“Furthermore, the reserve margin can also vary and change based on consumption pattern and seasons.
“For example, the daily fluctuation in demand is not significant and is cushioned by storage, but the seasonal fluctuation is more significant during
pre-festive period or hot weather periods,” he said.
However, Kadir said the most significant negative impact was the slow recovery to full supply after a production or trunk main supply interruption.
“For example, if you lost production of 15 per cent in a particular incident, and if at that point in time, reserve margin is three per cent, technically it
would take five days to recover the loss of production and to achieve full recovery.
“The effect on consumers is that they would suffer five days without water,” he said.