Langkawi is one of the most popular tourist islands in Malaysia. But visitors flocking there in recent months have been greeted by a lack of running water as a combination of El Niño and leaking pipes has caused a supply crisis.
Locals say problems have been ongoing for two years, Over 30,000 of the island’s 120,000 residents have reported having no running water at some point over the past 12 months.
Many more will have said nothing to the authorities, accepting as normal turning on the taps to be greeted by low pressure and a slow trickle of brown water.
It looks like the beloved Malaysian drink teh tarik, consisting of boiled black tea, evaporated creamer and condensed milk. Needless to say, it doesn’t taste like teh tarik.
Water trucks rumble around Langkawi each day, delivering supplies. Handy if you have a decent-sized water tank, which many residents have resorted to installing through the water crisis. Not so useful if you don’t.
Tanks are a necessity for Langkawi’s hotels, along with outdoor and indoor filters to ensure supplies are safe. Many hotels have installed individual filters in every guest room to avoid complaints from customers over the murky liquid coming out of taps.
Supply problems in Malaysia are not just restricted to Langkawi. The island is a microcosm of the issues affecting the country as a whole.
Issues which the government of prime minister Anwar Ibrahim elected in November 2022 has promised to resolve as part of efforts to do better on climate change.
El Niño and the water crisis
Latest figures suggest the residents of Langkawi and the 2.8 million annual tourists who visit the island consume over 45 million litres of treated water per day.
40 percent of this water comes from two dams located on Langkawi – Malut and Padang Saga. Which – thanks to El Niño – is where the water crisis starts.
El Niño is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon which increases global temperatures. It pushes warmer water in the Pacific Ocean further east and keeps it closer to the surface.
This in turn pushes the Pacific jet stream towards the southern USA and Gulf of Mexico. These areas are hit with wetter weather whilst south-east Asia, Australia and Central Africa experience drier conditions.
The latest El Niño event began in the summer of 2023 and has hit Malaysia particularly hard. Langwaki has gone weeks at a time without any rainfall, leaving its dams at dangerously low levels and rivers running dry.
Malut has been left operating at only 28.6 percent of capacity and Padang Saga at 34.83 percent. For context, anything below 60 percent is described as a warning level.
The lack of rainfall has also caused water levels in Sungai Melaka river to decrease, leading utilities company Syarikat Air Darul Aman (SADA) to issue a January warning as its treatment plants struggled to draw enough water from natural sources to meet demand.
Leaking undersea pipeline impacting supplies to Langwaki
Langwaki gets its remaining 60 percent of treated water from the mainland via a 37 kilometre long, 710mm diameter undersea pipeline.
The pipeline was laid in the 1990s and pumps 62 million litres per day from the Sungai Baru treatment plant in Perlis state to Langwaki.
If all of that water reached the island, it would be enough to cover Langwaki’s daily usage of 45 million litres. The pipe though loses 30 million litres per day – 45 percent of the total being pumped – to 23 different leaks.
Ageing infrastructure and the way water is managed have made pipe repair in Malaysia an important topic in recent years. State governments are in charge of land and water and with different political parties governing different states, it is often difficult to find a collaborative approach resources.
Federal government can only intervene in water management or invest in infrastructure with the consent of the state. Most states traditionally resist intervention, but a change in attitude in recent decades has seen grater cooperation.
Part of this is down to the realisation that federal government has greater expertise and more money to help with issues ranging from the significant amount of asbestos cement pipes in Malaysia to how water is metered.
In terms of fixing the undersea pipe, a repair project is underway funded by federal government with a planned January 2025 completion.
The aim is to reduce the amount of water being lost by repairing as many of the 23 leak spots as possible using an innovative clamping method.
Commercial divers are carrying out the repairs but it is a complicated and long-winded process with repairs only possible at certain times based on tides and approval from the Marine Department.
A Facebook post from SADA in February after a two-day repair to a section of the pipeline was completed shows the difference the project hopes to make.
“As a result of the two-day repair, SADA expects an increase of between six million litres per day (MLD) to eight MLD of treated water to be sent to the Tangki Pengimbang Penarak, Langkawi,” it said.
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