Nov 5, 2009

Mada welcomes river plan

KEDAH: The Muda Agriculture Development Authority (Mada) welcomes the proposal for man-made rivers to be built on its land to control floods.

Its general manager Datuk Abdul Rahim Salleh said that under the proposal made by the Kedah Drainage and Irrigation Department’s (DID) flood mitigation division, the DID would build two such rivers known as the northern and southern river diversions to control flood.

“The proposal will be submitted to the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry to be included under the 10th Malaysia Plan scheduled to begin in 2011.

“A 45km northern river diversion will be built from Sungai Pada in Sintok to Kuala Sungai Baru near here while the 40km southern river diversion will be built from Sungai Limau to Kuala Sungai Limau,” he said in an interview on Tuesday.

Abdul Rahim added that also included in the plan were reservoirs that could store water from several days of heavy rain.

“The construction of the two rivers and re-servoirs will cost about RM1bil. The proposal was made based on a study conducted by the DID and Mada in 2006 to curb floods affecting the rice bowl area,” he said.

He said Mada had suffered millions of ringgit in losses due to floods since 2005 and the disaster occurred not due to poor irrigation system in Mada area, but due to overflowing main streams.

“The 2005 flood disaster was the worst that hit Mada area with some 20,000ha of its 96,558ha land affected by the disaster. Last year, some RM6.3mil worth of crops were damaged by floods,” said Abdul Rahim.