The channelling of raw water from Semantan River in Pahang to Langat River in Selangor took place for the first time on Monday to boost its declining capacity.

State Infrastructure and Public Utilities, Agriculture Modernisation, and Agro-based Industry Committee chairperson Zaidy Abdul Talib said it was done after the Selangor and Pahang governments agreed on the channelling of 500 million litres of water a day (JLH) through the Pahang-Selangor Raw Water Transfer Project (Pamps).

“The water from Semantan River was pumped at 10.16pm (Aug 24) when the capacity of the Sungai Langat Dam dropped to 44.24 percent.

“A total of 300 JLH of water was pumped for the first channelling process and flowed into Sungai Langat via an outfall tunnel at 8.30am yesterday,” he said in a statement yesterday.

Pamps is a project encompassing the transfer of 1,890 JLH of raw water from Semantan River in Pahang via a 44km tunnel to the Langat 2 Water Treatment Plant (Langat 2) in Selangor.

However, the construction of Langat 2 is only expected to be fully completed in 2019.

Zaidy said to optimise the existing Pamps facility and to boost the availability of water in the Langat Basin, an early channelling of 500 JLH of raw water was implemented.

“The early channelling of water was a mitigative move aimed at reducing the release of water from the Sungai Langat Dam, which is now at 45.07 percent capacity.

“With the channelling, the release of water from the Langat Dam and the pumping of water from the Semenyih Dam had been stopped.

“It was also a move to tackle the water supply disruption problem due to the stoppage of the main water treatment plants along Langat River, namely at Cheras, Batu 11 and Bukit Tampoi during the drought due to the lack of liquidity and increase of the ammonia parameter in the river,” he said.

In addition, he said, it was to tackle the issue of the drop in water level in Langat River which impacted the water treatment plants, whereby pumping could not be done due to the low water level in the river.

He said the charge of RM50,000 or RM0.10 for every cubic metre of raw water channelled will be paid by the Selangor government to the Pahang government as per the agreement signed.

- Bernama