Published on August 31st, 2013 | by FM
No Water in Klang Valley for more days to come
PETALING JAYA: Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor (Syabas) has activated its emergency response plan to Code Red following for the treatment of four treatment plants caused by the diesel spillage about 10km away from the water intake area.
About 1 Million consumers in seven different districts will be affected by the water disruption.
Sungai Selangor Phase 1,2 and 3 and Rantau Panjang are closed for treatment plants to facilitate the clean-up works.
The current treated water reserve at the four plants can only last for a day.
These four plants produces about 2.67 billion litres of water daily that caters to about 57% of water demand in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya.
Corporate Communication and Public Affairs department deputy general manager Priscilla Alfred said the Code Red was activated at 4pm yesterday and staff were put on standby.
Code Red is activated when a situation is most severe and affects more than a million consumers.
“LUAS (Lembaga Urus Air Selangor) has initiated a cleaning up exercise,” she said.
Syabas now can only provide 42 mobile water tankers and 525 static tankers to assist the affected areas.
They are seeking for the government’s help to cater water for more people as well.
The Diesel Spill
The operators discovered the diesel spillage from a factory nearby about 8am yesterday and they immediately stopped operations.
Datuk Mohd Khusrin Munawi, Selangor state secretary hopes that the clean up operations can be done within 12 hours.
He said that it could take two to three days to completely get the plants functioning and to make sure that the water supply is clean.
“If works to clean up the river cannot be done by tonight, the situation is only going to get worse,” he said yesterday.
Prolonged closure of the treatment plants would result in low water pressure in the seven affected districts.
With high demand and treated water reserve capacity at around 1%, Syabas warned that recovery period would take a long time – even after the four water treatment plants resumed operations. – The Star
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