Not enough water to clean up?

WORLD Water Day is celebrated every March 22. This year it focuses on “Water and Climate Change”. This is a pertinent topic as the world is combating Covid-19. The key to fighting this outbreak is good hygiene and washing hands. This can only be done if there is sufficient water supply.

Over the years, we have noticed how weather pattern changes have affected rainfall patterns, causing massive floods or droughts as well as desertification globally. Many modelling of water resources are showing extremes of flood or drought as a result of climate change. Natural raw water availability is already a threat to human civilisation.

In some cases, groundwater is used to substitute the lack of surface water (rivers and lakes). Groundwater still needs to be recharged via rainfall or meltwater from glaciers. Over extraction of groundwater affects the environment severely further plunging us into chaos, uncertainty or even drastic moves. For example, Indonesia has decided to move its administrative capital Jakarta to Kalimantan (part of Borneo Island) mainly due to Jakarta’s land subsidence problem. This is related to over extraction of groundwater.

While availability of raw water via water cycles becomes a hot debate, we have two main threats. Water pollution and urban-rural population imbalance are real problems every government will have to face while picking solutions to mitigate and adapt.

Pollution

In 2017, Malaysia used 18,375 MLD (million litres per day) of raw water to produce treated water. This data may have been higher because Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya had suppressed demand increase due to insufficient treated water to meet rising demand. Based on data from Suruhanjaya Perkhidmatan Air Negara (SPAN) in 2019 water treatment plants were shutdown more than 300 times, mainly in Peninsular Malaysia due to pollution. These shutdowns amount to a loss of more than 2,700 hours of treated water production time.

Business entities are subjected to environmental laws. For example, wastewater discharge standards and there are prescribed waste that must be processed in the entity’s own facility. To save cost and increase profit, some choose to release these harmful chemicals into drains and rivers. In 2019, these culprits also used sewerage systems to dump their waste, which caused a week-long water supply disruption.

While we are facing serious risks from climate change and investing in huge infrastructure projects to meet the rising demand for treated water, incidents of pollution basically paralyse the system and cause unscheduled treated water disruptions. These disruptions will be aggravated if the affected treatment plants are supplying to low reserve margin areas. That is why, many Klang Valley areas face slow supply recovery after a disruption (both scheduled and unscheduled). When reserve margin is low, treated water has to fill up all the service reservoirs, meet existing demand, panic consumption as well as NonRevenue Water (NRW) which is part of the treated water supply system. Many states will face this if we are not prepared.

Urban-rural population imbalance

According to the Department of Statistics, urbanisation in Malaysia was at 34.2% in 1980 and has increased to 50.7% in 1991. By 2000 urbanisation was at 62% and it was projected that in 2020 we would have about 72% urbanisation. Therefore, these urban settings will immediately become water stressed zones. When population density increases, the economic activities in urban settings will tend to rise. Two decades ago, it was safe to say more than two-thirds of treated water was consumed by domestic consumers. Unfortunately, things have changed as in some states the non-domestic consumption of treated water has increased.

Due to such a high water stress situation, to relieve it we will have to import treated water from distant locations. This infrastructure is translated as an increase in water tariffs and operation risk. For example, a pollution incident in Sg Selangor would leave almost 60% of raw water usage halted in Klang Valley. To reduce the risk, Langat 2 was built and now it is linked with water catchment risks that may affect raw water availability.

Increase in demand is just the first part of the problem linked to urbanisation. Used treated water will become wastewater. Therefore, due to high population density, the pollution loading in these locations have increased many fold compared with the 1980s. Now, urbanisation becomes part of the pollution problem. For example, Sg Langat will be polluted by ammonia during dry season. The sources of ammonia include sewerage and sullage (excluding human excreta).

Now, the third part of the urbanisation problem is loss of virgin forests to make way for development, plantations and settlements. Loss of virgin forests will have a direct impact on the availability of raw water. At the end of the day it brings us back to water resource scarcity.

Moving forward

Adaptation and mitigation methods to fight climate change will only work when we first solve problems created by humans. In almost two decades of my involvement in this field, most of the time authorities like to implement cosmetic changes, especially those that have publicity value. Will the current government make real changes, including revamping and trimming down redundant agencies, improving enforcement and upgrading wastewater discharge standards? There are many simple cost-effective ways to ensure Malaysia has water supply security.

Lastly, can you imagine a world facing challenges far worse than Covid-19 and lacking basic water supply in fighting the spread of disease? What will happen to the population if people do not have enough water to maintain proper hygiene? We have a lot of work to do.

“Water pollution and urban-rural population imbalance are real problems that every government will have to face.