GEORGE TOWN – The Penang Water Supply Corporation (PBAPP) has no complaints about the operational capacity of the Mengkuang Dam, contrary to the claim by the National Water Services Commission (SPAN) that the dam is under risk.
PBAPP chief executive officer K. Pathmanathan said that there are no issues with the dam age, storage capacity, siltation or structural integrity.
The dam was handed back to the care of PBAPP in 2020, he said in a statement.
“We wish to clarify that there is nothing wrong with the 86.4 billion litre expanded Mengkuang Dam (EMD), which is Penang’s largest dam.
“We are eagerly awaiting the full completion of the RM1.2 billion dam expansion by the federal government.”
The dam is also supposed to undergo the laying of a pipeline to upgrade the drawdown capacity to 600 million litres per day (MLD).
In addition, the construction of a new 440 MLD pumping station at Sg Muda to enable efficient refilling of the EMD during wet seasons and a new Sg Muda barrage to support an additional abstraction of raw water from the river during wet seasons to refill the EMD are supposed to be in the pipeline.
“There is nothing wrong with the dam. It is just that it is scheduled to expansion.”
The EMD has more than proven its worth to Penang in 2022 and 2023 when its raw water reserves were drawn down during PBAPP’s emergency responses to three major unscheduled water supply interruptions arising from the three mishaps in Kedah.
Without the EMD, the impact of these incidents would have been worse for the majority of Penang water consumers.
Moreover, the time frame for the normalisation of water supply services after these mishaps would have been significantly longer, he noted.
As such, the decision of the Penang state government to take back the EMD in September 2020, before the full completion of the MDEP, has been proven to be the correct strategic decision.
The dam is currently serving its purpose as a strategic drought reserve for Penang as well as a useful emergency raw water resource that lessens the impact of mishaps related to Sg Muda, he said.
Earlier, SPAN claimed that piped water supply in the country could encounter more disruptions due to the ageing infrastructure of dams in the country.
According to the Dam Water Levels and Dam Water Supplies Risk Assessment Report, SPAN chairman Charles Santiago said seven dams were identified as high-risk.
“These are the Pedu, Muda, Durian Tunggal, Asahan, Mengkuang, Jus, and Linggiu dams.
“Overall, a total 16 out of 55 dams in Peninsular Malaysia that are used for water consumption are more than 50 years old,” he said. – The Vibes, October 24, 2023
