Home || Book Review || Comment || Concerns || Concordance || Heritage || News || People || Page 11
 
 

The Beginnings of Water
 

GEORGETOWN'S WATER SUPPLY, it is said,   began with a  well dug in sandy soil just beyond the entrance to Convent School at Light Street. It was Francis Light's first municipal act. He named the one acre of land surrounding the well, Well Estate(1). Whoever wanted water was welcome to it. "Whoever" numbered 10,000 in 1804.

The water did not taste too good; it smelt of tree roots -  the Pinang tree flavour being particularly disliked. The "finest water flowing from the hills in every direction"(2) had to be tapped and brought to the town if the growing population was to satisfied. 

R T Farquhar, who succeeded Leith, used convict labour to build an aqueduct consisting of a 4 mile long brick channel from the Botanic Gardens to town. The route was along Waterfall Road, Gottlieb Road, Burmah Road to Anson Road, Larut Road, and Northam Road ending at where the present E & O Hotel stands. This explains the local name for Burmah Road: Ch'ia Chooi Lor, Drawing the Water Road. The mosque where Aboo Sittee Lane meets Burmah road is also appropriately called Mesjid Tarek Ayer. 

At the E & O end water tanks, which came to be called "Well House," (3) were built provide water for vessels in the harbour. The "natives" were enjoined to supply the ships with only this "delightful drinking water" with threat of heavy penalties(4)

From the aqueduct, tin pipes, later to be replaced by galvanized pipes guided water to the houses along the street. But the aqueduct itself was a problem; bricks were too easily dislodged. From 1827 cast iron pipes gradually took over their function. One  cast iron mains made in the 1880's by the firm of Stanton Stavely is still functional in  Western Road. Cast iron pipes stretching to as far as Magazine Road brought additional water from Ah Mee's flour mill which flourished at the time behind the Kek Lok Si 

Primitive

THIS PRIMITIVE water system had severe drawbacks. Gravity induced flow produced  inadequate pressure; during the rainy season sand and silt added to the problems.  It  was MacRitchie(5), an engineer attached to the Municipality of Singapore who recommended a reservoir at the Waterfalls. Up till thenthe source of water was a primitive intake created by a granite wall placed in 1805 across the stream at the Waterfall Gardens But with MacRitchie's recommendations work began on a proper reservoir which was built by  damming a gully. This work was completed in 1894 and was followed by another  reservoir complete in 1914 at Ayer Itam. This reservoir was built from mass concrete without steel reinforcements 

In 1919 J D Fettes(6), Penang's first municipal engineer, tapped water from the Batu  Ferringhi valley bringing the water from three streams through a 4 mile long aqueduct  (8) which traversed a one mile long tunnel to Tanjong Bungah, from where one cast iron mains of 24 inch diameter brought the water to Mount Erskine to the Guillemard Reservoir which was completed in 1929 - the peculiar design of two circular reservoirs joined together earning it the local name of Bak Kiah Tni (The Spectacles Reservoir). 

It was designed by Naylor, the same Naylor who designed the Johore Causeway(8). Again these reservoirs as well as the arched bridge leading to the reservoir were built from mass concrete without steel reinforcements.

In 1954 Goh Heng Chong, then Deputy City Water Engineer, added the waters of the Teluk Bahang valley to the aqueduct by building an intake and pumping station with 4 Nos. diesel engine powered pumps pushing 4 million extra gallons a day up to the aqueduct A second steel connecting mains was added from the tunnel to the Guillemard Reservoir. With this final upgrade, he had exhausted all significant direct extraction of stream flows. A new era of large storage dams was to follow. .

Chlorine was introduced before the Japanese invasion. During the occupation Goh Heng Chong, who had become head of department after the abandonment of the island by the British created a miniature turbine to generate electricity to manufacture  chlorine from brine, the by product being soap, which was sold to the public. After the war things became easier with liquid chlorine purchased from Chemical Company of Malaysia. 

Heng Chong was thus reduced to low grade job under the head of the department, one A W Holmes who had succeeded Fettes as head which post he held until 1941 when he deserted the island with the other British colonials. Heng Chong was then requisitioned to run the waterworks under a Japanese Officer for $60 a month and rice rations. This was better than the fate of teachers of those days, many of whom were forced to ply trishaws for a living.. 

With the British Military Administration in 1945 came a man called Evatt from the Army Engineering Corps. He knew little about water supplies but had the reputation of being a strict disciplinarian. So it was that Goh Heng Chong in fact ran the department. He was named the Deputy City Engineer, a status reluctantly conceded   ten years after his recruitment. He did not make it to City Water Engineer  till 1959, the year after Kam U Tee joined the Department.

(2) Sir George Leith, Lieutenant-Governor 1904

(3) A photograph of Well House is an exhibit at the Penang Museum 

(4) Sir Stamford Raffles in a letter of August 2, 1824

(5) MacRitchie Reservoir, Singapore, is named after him

(6) Fettes died soon after the completion of the Guillemard Reservoir. He is the only engineer honoured by the municipality by having a road named after him

(7) The aqueduct area is a popular recreational and picnic spot and may be entered with permission

(8) It was Naylor who taught Prof Chin Fung Kee, the well known engineers when he was at      Queen's College, Belfast. 

(9) In 1908 the single water tap service cost 75 cts a month. It was proposed that the minimum meter charge should be $1. A Municipal Councillor, Lim Cheng Teik, the youngest to appointed in the history of the Straits Settlements, opposed the fee, saying that it was hardship on poor (NST 7.11.94). Succeeding water managers had addressed themselves to this challenge, arriving at today's 3 part tariff for domestic supplies, with a first part a life-line tariff for  -the poor. 

 ---------

*** The material for this article was taken from interviews with Dato Kam U Tee a former manager of the Water Authority and with Dato Lee Yow Ching the present director of Waterworks and a monograph written in 1962 by Loo Choo Kheam, a former headmaster of the Anglo Chinese School after a  study of documents available at the City Council