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Mudslinging begins again in northern water row

Kedah menteri besar Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor has threatened to redirect Sungai Muda away from Penang. In his latest threat, he said Penang would only be able to draw mud from the river. (Bernama pic)

PETALING JAYA: Penang deputy chief minister P Ramasamy and Kedah menteri besar Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor are it again, with another slugfest over Penang’s right to draw water from Sungai Muda which straddles both states.

The two have been at loggerheads since Sanusi started the “water war”, demanding that Penang pay for water it draws from the river, which originates in the forests near the Kedah-Thailand border and empties into the sea on Butterworth’s coast.

Kedah has demanded RM50 million a year since 2010 as payment for water extracted from the river, while Penang said it did not plan to pay a “single sen” as it was drawing water from its own territory.

Both states had been silent on the matter until Sanusi fired things up again late last year.

The latest row began when Sanusi warned today that Penang would end up drawing only “mud” instead of water from the river if demands for payment were not met.

Sanusi said he had several “unannounced plans”, hinting that the river would dry up on the Penang side. He had earlier threatened to redirect Sungai Muda away from Penang.

“We have certain projects that I have yet to announce. This will cause problems if they refuse to pay. Penang can carry on taking as much water as they want until they start extracting mud. Then, they can use that,” Sanusi told reporters at Yan today.

He said Kedah was ready to take the matter to court but would leave it to the federal government to mediate the matter beforehand.

Ramasamy said Sanusi had failed to understand the meaning and application of riparian rights. He said Sanusi, like the proverbial parrot, kept repeating that the source of water was from the Muda forest.

“Penang chief minister Chow Kon Yeow is very clear on the matter that the question of Penang paying for raw water charges does not arise in the first place.

“If money is a problem for Kedah, Sanusi should take delight in the fact that nearly RM700,000 of Kedah’s water debts to the federal government has been written off,” he said in a statement.

Recently, Chow had called the menteri besar “irrational” to demand the state for payment. Both Kedah and Penang have equal riparian and constitutional rights to abstract raw water from Sungai Muda.

Ramasamy said that if Pahang could escape its RM2 billion water debts, Kedah might be lucky to do so too.

“Even though Penang depends on Sungai Muda for nearly 80% of its water supply, the search for alternative sources of water is currently under way,” he said, adding that other than extracting raw water from Sungai Perak, other rivers in Penang could be exploited in the long run.

This includes the future possibility of converting sea water and the need to conserve rain water.

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