High water salinity 'to persist until May'

By The Nation

 

 

The Metropolitan Waterworks Authority (MWA) said on Wednesday (January 1) that the saltwater intrusion problem in the city's supplies will last until May.

 

MWA Expert Level 10 Chaiwat Vorapeboonpong said that the current salinity of tap water was five to ten fold higher than the normal level.

 

Chaiwat Vorapeboonpong, MWA Expert Level 10

 

“Doctors have warned patients with kidney, heart, brain and high blood pressure problems to use the water carefully,” he said.

 

According to the MWA’s real-time water-quality monitoring system, the situation of saltwater intrusion was as follows;

 

On January 1, 2020, at 8.30pm, salinity was 720 milligrams per litre.

 

On December 31, 2019, at 7.40 pm, salinity was 660mg per litre.

 

On December 30, at 6.30pm, salinity was 740mg per litre.

 

On December 29, at 6pm, salinity rose sharply to 1,030mg per litre.

 

On December 28, at 8.40pm, salinity had almost doubled to 2,030mg per litre.

 

Source: https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30380133

 

-- © Copyright The Nation Thailand 2020-01-05

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Well then the people will drink bottled water...but not use plastic bags from supermarkets....

Persist until May when it rains he means????

5 minutes ago, sammieuk1 said:

Persist until May when it rains he means????

Yup, i bet Singha and Chang will like it, they can sell much more drinking water now.

Might mess up a lot of the pumps pumping water to the roof tops. Nothing like taking a shower and needing a shower directly after. On the bright side it makes cooking easier not needing to add salt.

2 hours ago, sammieuk1 said:

Persist until May when it rains he means????

May? What decade they want.

Ah yes, the intrusion of sea water into the aquifer under Bangkok. As predicted. Still to come is the wider impact of seawater level increases (how's the Bangkok dyke coming?) Good job the melting of the Greenland Icefields won't affect Bangkok sea levels because Greenland is too far away (according to a noted Thai scientist in 2007).

 

Hang on, I need to find a nice wall to bang my head on...

As most people already know, the reason for the high salinity in Bangkok water is the fact that the sea water is pushing much further up the Chao Phraya on high tide because there is less water coming down from the 4 northern feeders. The RID doesn't want to deplete the already low dams as they know there are at least 5 months of dry weather ahead. . Thailand may be low on water, but they don't have fires like the poor Aussies. 

The MWA has a website to monitor salt levels coming from the various water distribution spots in BKK:

 

http://twqonline.mwa.co.th/EN/map.php?type=sal

 

I read in one place that it's typical to have drinking water with sodium levels of up to 200 milligrams per litre (0.2 grams). Right now, many of the stations around BKK are reporting sodium levels of double that amount, 400 milligrams per litre or higher.

 

Of course, that's still far less than the numbers reported in The Nation article above where the peaks were at 2000+ milligrams per liter (2+ grams), which would be VERY salty. As a yardstick comparison, that's close to enough total salt as recommended for an adult in an entire day just by drinking a litre of water with those kinds of levels.

 

The sodium levels at the various water distribution points on the two maps below are listed as grams per litre. So, as one example, the Klong Toey Pumping Station reading of 0.40 g per litre below means a sodium level of 400 milligrams per litre.

 

Oddly, for some reason, the sodium levels measured at the MWA's Siriraj Hospital location seem regularly to be only about one-fourth of those found elsewhere around BKK, e.g. 100 milligrams per litre compared to 300-400 milligrams or more at various other locations. Although there are also a few other locations with similarly low levels.

 

 

 

Fortunately, the numbers around BKK overall look a bit better today compared to yesterday's tallies above:

 

13 hours ago, rooster59 said:

High water salinity 'to persist until May'

In short: we're going to do sod all about it... so each household can do what they like about it !

Happy New Year from your over-payed officials !

12 hours ago, fruitman said:

Yup, i bet Singha and Chang will like it, they can sell much more drinking water now.

What will they do with all those plastic bottles?

1 hour ago, hotchilli said:

In short: we're going to do sod all about it... so each household can do what they like about it !

Happy New Year from your over-payed officials !

 

In fairness, I think it's closer to "we can't do anything about it". 

 

Except warn the public and let the affected entities know that they need to do something for the next few months if their process (or family) requires low saline water.

 

Seems pretty reasonable, and a lot better than the nice folks in Flint, Michigan got.