Two more water treatment plants ready by 2018
Published on: Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Kota Kinabalu: Two additional water treatment plants expected to be completed by 2018 will be pumping in an additional 120MLD water to fulfil growing demand for fresh water in Kota Kinabalu and surrounding areas.State Water Department (JANS) Deputy Director Teo Chee Kong said in addition to the two water treatment plants, the department will be implementing the fourth phase of its non-revenue water (NRW) reduction programme from 2015 through 2018."The two new water treatment plants will be the Telibong II Phase 2 with a capacity of 80MLD to serve Telipok, Menggatal, Inanam and Nountun and Kogopon Phase 2 with a capacity of 40MLD and four new reservoirs in Kimanis, Nagapas, Kg Manggis, Papar and Putatan.
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"Telibong II Phase 2 will be connected with 29.1kilometre of transmission main while Kogopon Phase 2 with 52.6 kilometre of transmission main," he said when presenting his paper entitled Sustainable Water Supply Development for KK Division – Past, Present and Future at the World Water Day 2015 Convention here, Monday.Teo said the tender documents and design for both projects have been completed and construction is expected to start by this year or next year and completed by 2018.He revealed that presently, the department in KK Division has a production capacity of 440MLD with almost 40 per cent of the design capacity from Babagon Dam.In terms of NRW reduction programme, the department will be entering the fourth phase of the programme targeting NRW commercial and physical losses of 27 MLD.
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"We have successfully reduced NRW to only 39 per cent from 59 per cent in 2002. The main component of these projects is to build district metering zones (DMZs) in Kota Kinabalu city, Penampang and Putatan districts."Currently, 72,893 consumers or 84 per cent of KK consumers are inside DMZs," he said, adding that the total DMZs is 293.
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In order to reduce NRW, Teo said the scope of work include detecting active leak, analyse and clean up billing system, profile meter audit and conduct customer meter GPS survey."During the project, it was revealed that many of the problems were caused by leak to the main and distribution pipes, non-functioning meters, illegal connections or water thefts which weakened the connection and a contributing factor to leaks, and many more."So throughout the contracts, leak detection works and pipe replacements were carried out to reduce physical losses while reduction of commercial losses were tackled by replacing non-functioning meters and reducing illegal connections," he said.Teo said that while the department had taken into consideration the future demands of consumers in Kota Kinabalu, the current projects may only be able to fulfil the needs up to 2022.Beyond that, he said, the department may need to consider other options in providing fresh water to the masses.He revealed that a study conducted in 1987 found that as long term solutions to water woes, surface run-of-river scheme is less viable economically as compared to storage-yield scheme."The total capital development cost of both schemes are very similar. However, storage-yield scheme significantly reduce operational cost by gravity supply," he said adding the scheme needs further studies and investigations.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
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