Penang CM hopes to sign water scheme deal with Perak this year

SEBERANG PERAI, Jan 2 — The Penang government hopes to finally kickstart the long delayed Sungai Perak water scheme by signing an agreement with Perak this year, Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow said today as he braces for a four-day scheduled water cut that will affect 85 per cent of the island state next week.

Chow said he hopes to ink a memorandum of understanding or an agreement on financing for the scheme with Perak soon.

“As it involved a facility within Perak state so Perak and the ministry has to work on this and we hope it can be expedited,” he said in a press conference at the Juru Volunteer Fire Brigade here.

He reiterated that the Sungai Perak Water scheme, which was previously proposed as the Sungai Perak Raw Water Transfer Scheme (SPRWTS), had stalled over a period of 12 years when Perak refused to provide raw water to Penang.

Now that Perak has agreed to provide treated water to Penang, Chow said discussions on the project have resumed.

“We are asking 700 million litres per day (MLD) from Perak under the scheme,” he said.

Chow said the Sungai Perak water scheme is part of the state’s long term water contingency plan but this does not mean the state is not implementing other projects pending this.

“The Sungai Perak project is a long term project that will take eight to 10 years and is dependent on Perak.

“We know we can’t wait forever so we have eight other projects under the Penang Water Contingency Plan 2030 (WCP2030),” he said.

He said PBAPP will be spending RM1.18 billion over the next few years for the WCP2030 to boost an increase of 602MLD of water supply for the state.

Among the projects planned include plans to build an additional water treatment plant (WTP) to extract water from Sungai Muda, a WTP at Mengkuang Dam to be able to use the water stored there and tapping into unutilised water sources such as Sungai Kerian and Sungai Perai.

Chow said some of the projects have already started and are in progress while others are underway.

“We are also laying a 13km of 1,800mm pipelines from Sungai Dua WTP to the Macallum area on the island and to the Bukit Dumbar reservoir so that water supply to the island is through a different pipeline from the pipeline supplying to the mainland,” he said.

He said these are long term projects that will be completed between this year and 2028.

“We started this plan two years ago, it’s not like we are not doing anything,” he said.

Recently, the state government and Penang Water Supply Corporation (PBAPP) were heavily criticised over the sudden water supply disruption that lasted almost a week just before Christmas last year due to a burst pipe deep in Sungai Perai.

PBAPP has also scheduled a water supply disruption for 590,000 of consumers in Penang from January 10 to 14 to shutdown the Sungai Dua WTP for maintenance and repair works.