BY VINCENT TAN

Visitors from UBM, the Dutch embassy and the media checking out one of the grit-removal chambers at the Bunus Regional Sewage Treatment plant.

TO help spread awareness about what happens after you press “flush,” Asiawater 2016 conference organiser United Business Media (UBM) Asia conducted a trip for various press to the Bunus Regional Sewage Treatment Plant in Kuala Lumpur.

During the visit, sewerage engineers from Indah Water Konsortium (IWK) gave participants an overview of the Setapak sewage catchment area, where the plant currently services a population of about 350,000 people.

With upgrading work under way, this capacity, according to IWK’s central region manager Mohd Taufik Salleh, would be expanded up to 1.1 million people in order to cater for Setapak’s expanding population by 2035.

It also serves the Ampang-Ulu Kelang area.

Visitors were also briefed on the different stages of wastewater treatment, starting with screening and removing the grit and sediment, as well as oil and grease in the preliminary stage.

This is then followed by removing other elements, from organic matter to suspended solids, and the resulting bricks composed of dried sludge are then carted to a sanitary landfill for disposal.

Prior to visiting the waste-treatment section outdoors, the visitors were taken on a quick tour of the Bunus plant’s research centre, where waste treatment experts were trying out newer machinery to see how well these performed in removing grit and solids in the preliminary treatment.

According to UBM Malaysia business development director Eliane Vandoorn, the visit was organised as a run-up to Asiawater 2016, the ninth edition of South-East Asia’s leading water industry conference, to be held in April in Kuala Lumpur.

“We are looking at the participation of more than 780 companies from 48 countries.

“There will be major country-specific exhibition pavilions, including the United States, South Korea, Singapore, Germany and India.

“In South-East Asia, about 4.9billion cubic metres of water is non-revenue water lost in the networks; this is about US$1.5bil (RM6.46bil) a year,” she added.

Vandoorn said that based on statistics provided by Global Water Intelligence, the percentage of NRW lost in Kuala Lumpur is at 32%, while the figure for Bangkok is 25%.

In Malaysia, there are more than 6,000 sewage treatment plants, along with about 17,000km of sewage network to handle the population’s waste discharge at present.