Introduction

Clean water is essential and basic need for one to survive. Treated water is not considered a source of water
for daily use for people in some remote areas in Sarawak. Some of the raw water sources are contaminated
with bacteria and dirt due to human activities such as littering, over-fertilization, logging and
environmental influences. A longhouse which is located in remote area of Baram district, with a journey of
about 3 4 hours by boat from Marudi, has no treated water supply. The people of the longhouse used to
depend solely on the river for their daily usage such as drinking, cooking, bathe, and so on. They only boil
the water before it was safe for consumption. The nearby river has turned muddy and they no longer use
the water for drinking and cooking due to construction of big project. They have used harvested rainwater
for cooking, and filtered rainwater (using a provided filter tank) for drinking purposes. During the dry
season, there is no rainwater to be harvested therefore no clean water can be supplied to the people. The
longhouse consists of 74 doors and Baram river bank is only 100 meters away. The people only depend on
power supplied by the diesel engine generators. The table below showed that the water from Baram river
has high turbidity and the total suspended solid.

Parameter Value
pH 6.05
Turbidity (NTU) 280
DO (mg/L) 6.60
Temperature (*C) 22.5
NH3 N (mg/L) 0.17
NO3 (mg/L) 0.11
PO4 3- (mg/L) 0.12
TSS (mg/L) 161
BOD (mg/L) 1.3
Fecal Coliform 4
(counts/100ml)
Total Coliform 32
(counts/100ml)
Table 1: Water quality of the river

We come up with a solution to this problem where we treat the river water by 3 simple processes, filtration,
sedimentation and chlorination and then ready to be used for the villagers.

First, the water source from the river will be taken with the help of water pump. Next, that raw water will
enter the first tank which will undergo the first stage of the treatment, filtration.

To be continued (Iswandi)