A SUDDEN drop in water level at the Sungai Muda (Lahar Tiang) intake, which affected the inflow to the Sungai Dua water treatment plant, will see a water supply disruption in several areas of Penang from today until Wednesday.

Penang Water Supply Corporation (PBAPP) chief executive officer K. Pathmanathan said the unexpected situation has affected the water supply for thousands of consumers in the three Seberang Perai districts and the southern areas of Penang.

“Around 5am today, an incident likely to have occurred upstream of Sungai Muda, Kedah, caused the raw water level at the Lahar Tiang intake to drop below 1.0m. The normal level is above 2.0m. As a result, PBAPP cannot abstract raw water from Sungai Muda.

“The river is the main source of raw water in Penang and more than 80% of the raw water taken by PBAPP every day for treated water comes from Sungai Muda. The source of raw water from Sungai Muda is channelled to the Sungai Dua plant,” he said in a statement today.

He said the Sungai Dua plant is the largest and most important plant in Penang and treated water is supplied to all of Seberang Perai and also to the southern areas of Penang.

As a result of the incident, the Sungai Dua plant is unable to produce its normal volume of about 1,000 million litres of treated water per day (JLH).

Pathmanathan said PBAPP was channelling water from the Mengkuang dam to support water production in the Sungai Dua plant but its production is limited to 300 JLH, which is not enough to cover the shortage from Sungai Muda.

He said currently the production of treated water at the Sungai Dua plant is limited to 600 to 650 JLH, that is, until PBAPP can fully resume raw water abstraction from Lahar Tiang.

“PBAPP is not sure when this ‘recovery’ will happen and we cannot say with certainty when water supply services in Penang will be fully stabilised for all users because we do not know exactly when the water level in Sungai Muda will recover to 2.0m or higher,” he said.

He said the PBAPP engineering team was working around the clock to optimise the raw water abstraction operation at the Lahar Tiang intake and the water production operation at the Sungai Dua plant.

“We will treat as much water as possible to supply as much as we can in Penang and users who still have water supply will need to store water for use in the next few days,” he said.

It was reported earlier 252,000 consumers in three districts namely Kuala Muda, Kulim and part of the Baling area in Kedah were affected by unscheduled water supply disruption due to a sudden drop in the water level caused by the damage to the water control gate (barrage) of Sungai Muda.

Syarikat Air Darul Aman Sdn Bhd, in a statement today, said water supply disruption in the three districts started at 7.25am today and the unforeseen incident resulted in a momentary halt to operations at the Sungai Petani/Pinang Tunggal and the Kulim Hi-Tech plants until the river level stabilises. – Bernama, May 14, 2023.