State local government, traffic management, and flood mitigation committee chairman Chow Kon Yeow said when Penangites witnessed excessive water from the recent flooding, “all we thought of was how to get rid of excess water”.
At the same time, Chow said, the water was needed to meet the needs of the people during periods of drought, citing an example where in the past two years, the state had to perform a balancing act where it decided to reroute water meant for the agricultural sector to public use.
He said while the general public might not have known about it, the farmers in the Kepala Batas area were well aware that the state government had decided not to release some water to the padi fields.
Instead, it was sent to the water treatment plants so that it could be treated and sent for use throughout the state.
The question, he said, was how the Penang government could capture all the rainfall that contributed to flooding in the state for use by the public, especially during periods of drought.
“It is a valuable resource that should not go down the drain, river and sea.
“We need to maintain a healthy water reserve. During rainy months, there is enough capacity in the dams to keep the water, to be released during a drought period in Penang,” he said in his keynote speech at the two-day Symposium on Sustainable Penang titled “Can Penang Be Made Sustainable By 2030?”.
Over half of Penang was submerged in floodwaters following hours of torrential rain that killed seven people in the state in early November last year. More than 6,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes.
Authorities said the floods were caused by one-and-a-half month’s worth of rain that poured down continuously over 15 hours.
Previously, Chow said September to December were the wet months, while January to April were the dry months.
However, he noted that today, Penangites were seeing heavy rainfall even in the month of January, and that “we may have more rain to come”.
“I have given up trying to think this is a dry month. I cannot be thinking like that.
“Even during Chinese New Year, and the Cheng Beng season, it is supposed to be very dry but we cannot expect the norm to prevail. We need to reckon with new norms,” he said.
The challenge in mitigating flooding, Chow said, could be met by combining engineering and environmental science knowledge.
“Now I think after the Nov 4 and 5 floods, everyone is fearful when they see dark clouds gathering in the sky over their residential area.
“Something very important for us to reckon with is how to manage water run-off, how to design a sustainable urban drainage system, to ensure water is retained and released slowly into the river and drainage system so that it doesn’t cause flooding in our community areas,” he said.