‘Illegal’ inhabitants on river reserves

No structure or farming activities should be allowed to take place on the river reserve land. This is to ensure people’s safety during erosion and floods.

FEATURE

CAMERON HIGHLANDS: The Ringlet reservoir’s water holding capacity has greatly decreased due to the high volume of rubbish, sand and silt sedimented on the lake floor.

Consequently, the man-made lake that holds water to power up the Sultan Abu Bakar Hydroelectric Dam has now become a time bomb that can inundate and devastate lives, areas and property as it can no longer sustain a downpour to its original capacity.

TNB Cameron Highlands Power Stations General Manager Mustafa Hashim said the TNB had taken up the issue with relevant agencies and acknowledged that the Sultan Abu Bakar dam could overflow any day now.

“Another huge risk is that the intake screen to the Sultan Yussuf power station tunnel clogs up due to the sheer volume of the rubbish there, such as farming waste, plastics and ropes,” explained Mustafa, who has been working at the Cameron Highlands since 2011.

Water must pass through an intake screen which is six metres high and 12 metres wide, before flowing into the tunnel at the power station. When the screen is clogged up, water cannot get into the tunnel to power up the hydroelectric dam.

Mustafa said cleaning up work at the intake screen is carried out regularly but it is not 100 percent effective. The operation is also expensive.

One of the cleaning methods used was “raking”, in which the rubbish is removed manually from the intake screen to the tunnel.

This operation is carried out when the station finds the level of water passing through the screen decreasing.

The cleaning system requires an experienced diver to dive in and remove the rubbish at night.

This operation cannot be carried out during the day as the dam operates as per a “peaking” system.

River reserves act as buffer

Peaking allows water to be stored in the reservoir and then released to generate electricity during peak demand periods.

“Whether a screen is clogged is known as a result of screen monitoring carried out at the control room at the Sultan Yussuf power station at the 19th Mile.

The water levels at the reservoir and the intake screen are monitored by workers on a shift basis regularly,” he said.

Besides that, Mustafa said the dredging work to scoop out sand, silt and rubbish were being carried out at three main locations – in front of the Bertam intake screen, at the mouth of the Ringlet River and at the mouth of the Habu and Bertam rivers.

To ensure a strong current, small dams are built to prevent sediment and sand from entering the river.

The dregs from the small dams are transported to a sediment disposal area in the Jasin River, not far away from the reservoir.

TNB has spent some RM80 million worth of capital on dredging sediment material, an operation carried out once every five years. It also spent another RM20 million on annual maintenance works.

The strip of land on both sides of the riverbanks has actually been gazetted as the river reserve land as per Section 62 of the National Land Code.

The tract of the land acts as a buffer between the river and the land next to it, aimed at protecting the river from undesirable activities that may affect its functions.

The breadth of the reserve is dependent on the width of the river running in the middle.

No structure, permanent or otherwise, or farming activities should be allowed to take place on the river reserve land. This is to ensure people’s safety during erosions and floods.

Inhabited river reserve land

However, the reality is that the river reserve land was an area that had vegetable farming and human settlements prior to the mud flood.

The Bertam River runs over 25km downstream into the Ringlet Reservoir. It was found that there were human settlement and activities along more than six kilometres of the land adjacent to the river.

A man who worked not far from Habu commented: “The river water here is full of pollution and I think only 30 percent of the river is water.

“The rest is all sand and silt. That is why the colour of water at the river cannot be classed in the same way other rivers in the country are.”

The sediment blanketing the actual depth of the Ringlet reservoir has prevented the Sultan Abu Bakar dam from generating electricity at its full capacity.

On the night of the recent incident, the water level at the dam was only a metre below the maximum level. One can only imagine the risk if it had hit the maximum mark.

In the incident, four people were killed, including one who died of a heart attack, when Bertam River overflowed following the release of water from the dam. The floods also left 80 houses and several cars destroyed in their wake in the Bertam Valley settlement areas.

The government had quickly responded to the disaster that ensued and taken measures to prevent its recurrence.

The 2014 Budget tabled by Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak on Oct 25 saw an allocation of RM40 million to widen and deepen the Bertam River.

-Bernama