Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor Sdn Bhd (Syabas) today temporarily closed the Sungai Semenyih water treatment plant due to contamination of the raw water, a move likely to cause unscheduled interruption in the supply of water to 1.2 million people in four Selangor districts.

Syabas chief executive officer Ruslan Hassan said a breached wall of a landfill had caused leachate to seep into the Sungai Kembong which fed raw water to the plant.

"The treatment plant was shut down at 1.40am after the plant management, Konsortium Abass Sdn Bhd (Abass), detected ammonia in the water at a level higher than that set by the Health Ministry.

"The temporary closure of the plant is expected to impose an unscheduled interruption to the supply of water to 300,000 families or 1.2 million people in the districts of Petaling, Hulu Langat, Sepang and Kuala Langat," he said in a statement.

Ruslan said Syabas had activated the Emergency Response Plan (ERP) yellow code and channelled water from other plants to the affected areas as well as placed on standby 32 water tankers and 300 static tankers to ensure uninterrupted supply of water as much as possible.

He said it could not be determined as yet when the treatment plant would be able to resume operation because work had to be done to cleanse the river water and repair the breached wall of the landfill.

"If the recovery process cannot be completed by this evening and the water level in the reservoirs continues to drop to the critical stage, Syabas will have to raise the ERP to the red code," he said.

Following the activation of the yellow code, Syabas has set up 24-hour crisis operation centres in the four districts to undertake monitoring as well as to establish to disseminate information to the affected people.

The people are advised to contact Syabas through the Puspel toll-free line 1-800-88-5252, SMS to 39222 by typing PUSPEL<space>complaint/query, surfing the official Puspel twitter site at http://twitter.com/puspel or do a search for "puspel syabas" on Facebook .

- Bernama