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Water, Water Everywhere, I Turn My Tap but It’s Not There By Ishak Ariffin We live in the tropical zone, with 12 hours of sunshine all year round. We get plenty of rain all year round too, some months a lot more than others. Only the northwest corner of the Peninsula gets a distinct dry period from January to March. This is the area that lies to the west of an imaginary line between Songkhla and Sungai Petani, that ecologists called the Kedawi region. Now that has changed too, with the erratic weather pattern that we have been experiencing in recent years. I remember the grass in my home state up there in laksa land (Kedah, of course!) used to turn yellowish brown in January and remained that way until late March. Semi-deciduous trees shed their leaves like in the autumn in temperate countries (maybe it is the trees’ strategy to reduce water loss). That was when the bare dedap trees sprout flowers in deep red amongst its leafless branches, and the kapok (kekabu) seeds cracked to show off their white fluffy fibres that we used for stuffing pillows and mattresses in the old days. The drains in big towns such as Alor Star were stagnant, helping to retain some humidity, although they smell unpleasant. When it coincided with the padi harvesting, you can catch the most glorious sunsets in the evenings. It was hot and dry at that time of year. Then everything came back to life in glorious green when the rain returns in April. This year we have had thunderstorms in late January and February. Water is Life But we were never really short of water. That is no longer true. Despite having an estimated 990 billion m3 (2008 figures) of rainfall annually, and 566 billion m3 of that total flowing into our rivers,and our water usage being roughly only 3% of the latter, we are running short of water supply. Domestic and industrial water demand is only about 6,000 million m3 a year! Initially, it was the rapid growth of industrial estates that brought shortages of water in their neighbouring towns. Then came the rapid urbanisation, all along the west coast of the Peninsula. Factories that used to be way out of town suddenly found themselves surrounded by housing estates. Many places begin to experience frequent water supply disruption.I’ll bet not many people remember the drought in 1998 that brought hardship on some 1.8m Klang Valley residents due to water rationing. But we still have plenty of rain and flowing rivers, except that our most of our rivers now looked like a perpetual supply of tehtarik. Our water treatment plants had to work overtime to make the water potable or clean enough for our consumption. And we are running short of rivers that can provide clean water to the treatment plants as development encroaches further and further upstream and inland. 8 97% of our 6,000 million m 3 per year potable water supply comes from rivers and the balance is from ground water. In contrast, a country like Denmark consumed almost 1,000 million m3 per year, and it is entirely sourced from groundwater. Their groundwater resource is estimated to be only 1,800 million m³ per year. Sg Selangor Dam In Perlis we had to inundate 5% of the land area to create the Timah-Tasoh impoundment to provide water for irrigation and for domestic consumption. Perlis was totally dependent on groundwater and water supply from Kedah. However, it was then found that the demand for domestic & industrial uses exhausted the original design capacity of the dam. In Selangor, a water treatment plant downstream of Sungai Bernam had to be closed due to saline intrusion. This was due the reduced river flow that resulted in sea water flowing in further inland up to the water intake points. One of the things that affect water level in the river is the increasing water extraction upstream. Loss of water catchment areas due to opening of forested areas for other uses also affected river flow. Fifteen years or so ago an area near Balakong in Cheras, near a water treatment plant suffered water supply disruption but it was raining a lot and the houses around it were suffering from flash floods. How could we have water shortage and flood at the same time?In 1991 another state suffered water supply shortage for a number of years because the main water supply dam was contaminated by industrial effluent. Now we have found that several states in the Peninsula are running short of water come 2020. We have resorted to expensive remedial actions that include building more dams and water transfers between neighbouring states through tunnels punched through our mountains and hills. In the meantime, we remain complacent about our per capita water consumption. We continue to waste our water as if the supply is endless. The national average consumption was 210 “Too much water” - When the river overflows NEWSLETTER OF THE MALAYSIAN INSTITUTE OF PLANNERS
litres per capita per day in 2011. Per capita consumption in the west coast states in Peninsular Malaysia are all above the national average.Some industry experts argued that the real figures are much higher, closer to 300 litres per person per day. But our daily per capita usage is indeed higher than Singapore (155 litres), the Philippines (175 litres) and Indonesia (130 litres). If we compare with more advanced countries, in Denmark it is only 114 litres, Australia 150 litres, England & Wales 150 litres. USA is perhaps the only country that consumed more than us, at 300-380 litres per capita per day! Some Third World countries don’t even have half the water we used daily. The UN Population Fund recommended that the fair level of domestic water usage is 100 litres per person per day. We can get by with just 30 litres for drinking and cooking and to maintain hygiene. We also suffer huge losses due to non-revenue water (NRW), largely due to leaking pipes that transport water to our taps and water theft. NRW for Kelantan, Pahang, Perlis and Sabah is more than 50%.The highly industrialised and developed states in the country are already experiencing pressures from acute supplies to meet the demands from their residents, the industries and the development projects. The loss from NRW is estimated at about 43% of total water revenue! And if we look at it in another simple minded way, it would also mean that for whatever amount we invested in creating new water supply (such as building more dams and treatment plants) we are only going to get half the value invested before we even start the construction if we don’t tackle the NRW first. Leaking pipe Not many people realised that we flushed 30% of our water down the toilets and spent another 35% in the showers or baths. Only 10% is actually used for drinking and cooking. Laundry and cleaning takes the other 25%.It doesn’t make sense for us to spend so much money to supply treated water and then 90% of it just went down the drains and sewers.That’s after we have lost nearly half of it through leaky pipes (NRW). Silly, aren’t we?Our water supply is so heavily subsidised and the water from our tap is so cheap that we are not bothered by our wasteful habits. Only when we turn our taps on and no water came out will we start jumping and tearing our hair out. Try telling an African in Ethiopia that we used clean water to flush the toilets and they will probably think that we are crazy. One third of the world population is already facing problems of water shortage and poor quality drinking water. UNESCO has predicted that water shortage will be a worldwide problem by 2020. Prophets of doom have wagered that the next world war will be over control of fresh water supplies, not oil. We can live fairly comfortably without electricity for a day or two (although a lot of people will have suffered Internet withdrawals!), but not without water! Although 70% of the human body is water, we cannot survive more than a week without water. Water is life. Without water there is no life. In the Quran it is stated, “Behold! in the creation of the heavens and the earth; ... in the rain which Allah Sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead;...” (2:164); “And Allah has created every animal from water...”(24:45); “... It is He Who has created man from water...(25:54)” (translations by Abdullah Yusuf Ali). Singapore has put in place their long term strategy for their water supply. They will not be highly dependent on water supplied from Johor anymore come 2060. The second of the two bilateral agreements with Johor will expire in 2061.The first agreement expired in 2011. They have put in place measures to ensure selfsufficiency by recycling their wastewater for consumption that they termed NEWater. NEWater will supply40% of Singapore’s water needs by 2020 and a further 25% supplied by desalinisation. NEWater is primarily for non-potable industrial uses. A small percentage of NEWater is also blended with raw water in the reservoir for treatment as potable water. They will cut their per capita consumption to 147 litres per day. By 2060, NEWater will supply 50% and desalinisation another 30% of their water supply.This is sensible considering that only 30% of demand comes from Singapore’s domestic sector and the non-domestic sector consumes the other 70%. Furthermore, we are going to literally flush 90% of the water down the drains anyway. It is a win-win situation because recycling most of our wastewater also means that we reduce the possibility of polluting our waterways. In our case, we are not only consuming too much but we are also polluting our water sources. And our strategy in the past has always been to build more dams. The first National Water Resources Study commissioned in 2000proposed the construction of another 50 dams to meet our water demand by 2050! This was based on a continuous linear growth of demand. That’s a big assumption that our rivers will be able to supply enough water way beyond 2050 and we cannot change our water consumption habits. There have been very little discussions about managing demand and cutting down our daily per capita usage. Our focus has been too much on the supply (and the potential profits that can be made from construction of water supply facilities!).Demand management is a very important strategy that complements the supply strategy, because water supply in not infinite. We should not wait until our potential water resources have been exhausted before we start looking at managing the way we use water. There have not been enough efforts towards cleaning up our rivers that passes through our urban centres to return them to at least Class IIB level (i.e. suitable for recreational use with body contact) so that we can use them again for recreation. For several decades more than 50% of our urban rivers monitored by Jabatan Alam Sekitar have lingered within the polluted and slightly polluted range. The main contributors to river pollution have been named as sewage treatment plants (I thought they were supposed to clean the wastewater?), manufacturing industries and palm oil mills. Earthworks have also been a major contributor of pollution of our rivers. We have the technologies now to clean wastewater up to standard A (as clean as the pristine river water) of effluent discharge. Hence, water discharged from our sewage treatment plant that utilises this technology will be cleaner than water from our rivers. Taking water from the river now is akin to taking water from the sewer since we treat our rivers like one! In my course of work I have come across a river where the water sampled is almost Class IV (suitable only for irrigation, not even suitable for livestock consumption!) near a water intake point! Let’s not wait until the last tree has been cut, the last fish has been caught and the last river has been poisoned before we realise that money cannot be eaten! Note: this article was originally written and published in Berita MCOBA. It is reproduced here with permission. NEWSLETTER OF THE MALAYSIAN INSTITUTE OF PLANNERS 9
Page 1 and 2: 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION DECEMBER 2
Page 3 and 4: Ucapan Presiden Sempena MIP Patron
Page 5 and 6: MIP 40TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION AC
Page 7: CHARLES READE (1880—1933) - FIRST
Page 11 and 12: MUSEUM NEGARA EXHIBITION ON URBANIS
Page 13 and 14: MIP President Prof Dato’ Dr. Alia
Page 15 and 16: WORLD CLASS SUSTAINABLE CITIES CONF
Page 17 and 18: STANDING COMMITTEE MEMBERS 2011 - 2
Page 19 and 20: MIP CALENDAR OF EVENTS JANUARY 2012
Page 21 and 22: MIP CALENDAR OF EVENTS LUMPUR 5 TAS
Page 23 and 24: (Contd. from Pg 24) The cities of P

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