Water Woes

If the electricity supply is cut off, all you have to do is light up a few candles and voila, you have light. But when the water supply is cut off, that is a different kettle of fish.

We have been having water problems for a few days now in our fair city. Today is the pits. Our tap is bone dry. The information I got was the operator of the water treatment plant was having trouble with the pumps. The newspaper has an article on this sad state of affairs but even the papers don't seem to give a clear picture of what is happening. They are more concerned with the plight of students at the local university. None of their 'investigative' reporters seem to zoom in on the real story. How could 8 pumps break down simultaneously? There was no mention of who is operating the water treatment plant and how such a situation could have come about. Every pump at any treatment plant has a stand-by pump. In the event of failure of the operating pump, the stand-by pump would be utilised to minimise interruptions to the supply of water to the consumers.

Nobody seems to ask how 8 pumps could breakdown at the same time! The running of the water treatment plant has been privatised and I guess the operators of this treatment plant have powerful connections which has enabled them to be kept out of the news! So much for 'investigative' reporters in this country.

Operating a water treatment plant is not very difficult, actually. It is easy money if the operators pay attention to the maintenance part of the job.

The raw water is extracted at (1. Intake). Depending on the quality of the raw water - chlorine, allum and lime are added and the water flows to the flocculation tank(2) and then to the sedimentation tank(3) where the unwanted particles settle down and are periodically removed. The water is then channeled to the filters(4) where the finer particles are removed and the clear water is collected into the clear water tank(5). Chlorine is added for disinfection purposes and lime to control the PH value. At No. 6 is where the pumps used for pumping out the clear water to elevated reservoirs are located. The problem could be here. If the pumps are not maintained properly, then they will breakdown and no water can be pumped out.

On the other hand, if somebody had been sleeping on the job and had allowed the clear water tank to overflow, the excess water might have flowed into the pumphouse and inundated the pumps! That could also be a possibility. We will never know as all our 'investigative' reporters are busy at the University Utara Malaysia taking photos of students playing with water pumped from wells at the campus.

Why are they having wells at the campus is another mistery especially after the government had spent millions to lay trunk mains leading to the campus, building reservoirs on the hilltop for them and a special pumphouse to pump the water up to these reservoirs! Maybe they had advanced knowledge of the possibility of 8 pumps breaking down simultaneously at the water treatment plant!