DAP's Klang MP Charles Santiago today warned that Selangor's water crisis has deteriorated to an emergency level, charging that Menteri Besar Abdul Khalid Ibrahim was "playing stupid" over the situation.

"Khalid is refusing to impose water rationing as it will reflect badly on him.

"But he needs to stop playing stupid and ignoring the growing water emergency for his political survival," he told a press conference in Klang this morning.

Charles said if a combination of water rationing and conservation efforts do not start immediately, the state will not have any water left to ration.

He said while Abdul Khalid has insisted the current level of 33.46 percent at Sungai Selangor dam was not a cause for concern, the actual water level was much lower.

This, he said was because dams would always have "dead storage" of between 15 to 20 percent of its volume, which is unusable as it is comprised of mud, rubbish and sediment.

He added as it is the dry season, part of the water released from the dam also cannot be fully used as they will be absorbed by the river bank in the form of transmission loss on top of evaporation loss.

Luas: State not in 'emergency'

In response later today, the Selangor Water Management Authority (Luas) rebutted the claim.

"We would like to stress that based on information from Syarikat Pengeluar Air Sungai Selangor (Splash), the 30 percent critical dam level does not include dead water storage," said Luas director Md Khairi Selamat.

As such, he stressed the state was not in an emergency situation and therefore rationing was not required.

Furthermore, Md Khairi said efforts are already under way to ratchet up the supply of raw water from alternative sources.

He said at present, the Sungai Selangor dam releases 700 million litres of per day (MLD) of water per day and the Sungai Tinggi dam releases 500MLD while 500MLD more are pumped from alternative sources such as ponds.

"Luas estimates alternative water production from ponds will be increased to 800MLD by next week. This will reduce the amount of water that needs to be released from both dams," he said.

He added the remaining were from other sources such as cloud seeding.

Earlier at the press conference today, Charles also weighed into the the alternative source from which the state is pumping water from, which are former mining ponds.

He said at least two former mining ponds which the state government has been pumping water from have also run dry.

Constant tests

"They are now going further inwards to other former mining ponds and some of these mining ponds deeper inside are heavily tainted with heavy metal such lead and arsenic," he said.

As such, he urged for even greater oversight and constant tests to ensure that the water pumped into Sungai Selangor remains at a safe level and does not turn poisonous.

Responding to this, Luas' Md Khiari assured that the state's Health Department is constantly conducting tests on the water to ensure it complies with the Health Ministry's water quality standards.

He said the ponds have enough water to last up to five months by which time the monsoon season would have arrived in October.

He added Luas and several other state agencies are working hard to ensure that there will be sufficient raw water supply to avoid rationing.