“I am confident that water reserves will be enough from now until May,” Pisak Cholayut, Director of the Phuket Provincial Waterworks Authority (PWA) said on Wednesday (Mar 23).
“Bang Wad reservoir is the main water reserve for Phuket. It has a full capacity of about 10.3 million cubic metres, right now it still has 5.52 million cubic meters of water in store,” he said.
Bang Niow Dum reservoir in Tambon Thepkrasattri, which has a full capacity of about 7.2 million cubic metres to serve areas in Thalang, is also in good supply. “It currently has about 5.5 million cubic metres of water,” said Mr Pisak.
“There are other private individual reserves, such as old tin mine lagoons, from which we buy water, and these currently have a total of nearly 3 million cubic metres of water in store.
“There is no need for people on water supply to take precautions. There will be no cut-offs or water pressure reductions required in order to make reserves last,” he said.
“The only reductions to water pressure will be due to water supply pipes being installed. We expect to complete our current pipe installations by around July,” he added.
But if people are worried about water shortages, Mr Pisak advised them to simply keep an emergency water supply in a tank at their house.
The PWA water supply to Patong, in particular will be fine, said Tumrong Komphet, Head of Water Production and Standards.
“Patong has direct supply from Bang Wad of about 10,000 cubic metres per day plus about 3,000 cubic metres provided by individual suppliers who we contract water from,” he explained.
Mr Tumrong also foresaw no hiccups with supply to Kata-Karon. “We supply about 8,000 cubic metres per day, and the reverse-osmosis plant there supplies about 8,000 cubic metres per day to people in the Kata and Karon areas,” he said.
Chalong and Rawai stood apart, as there is no mains supply from Bang Wad to the south of the island, explained Mr Tumrong.
“We supply about 3,000 cubic metres per day to those areas, but all from individual suppliers,” he said.
The long-awaited Klong Krata reservoir, still under construction to the west of Chao Fa West Rd, is expected to bring much relief to southern residents, said Mr Pisak.
“When finished, the Klong Krata reservoir will have a capacity of 4.2 million cubic metres of water and supply 500 cubic metres per hour to residents in Chalong, Rawai and the Sakdidet area,” he said.
“This project belongs to the Royal Irrigation Department. The water-treatment plant is ready, but the actual dam barrier itself is not complete. We expect the facility to start providing water by next year,” he added.