Water plant using RBF to overcome siltation problems

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Ubaidillah explains to Awang Tengah (left) at the water treatment plant on how the RBF operates.

BINTULU: Bakun Water Treatment Plant is the first in the state to use the Riverbank Filtration System (RBF) to supply raw water to consumers, said Minister of Resource Planning and Environment II Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan.

“The RBF has an advantage of supplying better quality raw water, which can reduce the filtration load of treatment plant. Most importantly, it will not be affected by the siltation in Koyan River,” he told reporters covering his visit to the water treatment plant here yesterday.

He added that the RBF could ensure high quality and high capacity water production.

Awang Tengah, who is also Minister of Public Utilities, said the plant was commissioned in 1998, and siltation on the Koyan River was a major obstacle in getting consistent and sufficient volume of raw water.

Water from Koyan River is highly turbid and had suspended solids. This caused high maintenance on raw water pumps and difficulty in water treatment processes as intake pumps shut down frequently due to the siltation.

Awang Tengah pointed out that this was one of the initiatives of the government to overcome water intake problem in Sg Asap.

“The system has been in operation, and it will solve the problem. It will not be affected by the siltation because it uses water from the bottom of the river itself.”

The system became operational last week with a five million litre per day (mld) capacity, whereas the plant’s current capacity is about four mld and water demand is around 4.6mld.

Awang Tengah said two proposals were considered, and the other was using a gravity feed water system to tap the nearby waterfall.

“The bottom line is we want to address this problem as soon as possible not only for short term measure but also for the long haul as we know the demand is increasing,” he said, adding that the government was committed to supply treated water to all villages in Sg Asap.

Assistant Minister of Public Utilities (Electricity and Telecommunication) Datuk Dr Stephen Rundi Utom, Belaga assemblyman Liwan Lagang and Ministry of Public Utilities Permanent Secretary Ubaidillah Abdul Latip were also present.