KUALA SELANGOR (May 18): The raw water guarantee scheme (SJAM), which was developed by the Selangor government to ensure that there is no disruption to the operation of water treatment plants (LRAs) during raw water pollution incidents, will be operational in stages, starting October.

Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari said the raw water pumping project from the HORAS 600 reservoir in Sungai Selangor and the RM320 million reservoir in Sungai Semenyih has now achieved more than 51% progress and is expected to be fully operational early next year.

He said that under SJAM, consumers will be able to enjoy a continuous supply of water without interruption even if pollution of the raw water source is detected in the rivers, by diverting the polluted water and preventing the polluted raw water from entering the LRA.

“Once this project is fully completed, if raw water pollution occurs in the two rivers, LRAs such as Rantau Panjang, SSP 1,2,3 and Semenyih will be able to continue supplying water to consumers without being affected by the pollution,” he said after officiating the SJAM at HORAS 600, here on Thursday (May 18).

He said the initiative was part of the state government's efforts to deal with incidents of pollution of raw water sources which occurred in previous years and had affected 1.6 million Air Selangor account holders.

“Based on our experience in managing the pollution of raw water sources, we were able to identify the source of the pollution within 12 hours, but there were incidents that required a longer time.

“However, our goal is to avoid a work stoppage of more than four hours because if the work stoppage is more than four hours, there will be disruption to user accounts,” he said.

In the meantime, in order to deal with the El Nino phenomenon, Amirudin said Selangor currently has a reservoir level of raw water sources in dams and reservoirs of at least 95%, which is capable of meeting the needs of domestic and industrial users for a period of four to six months.