Protection of water: Robust of artificial barriers in application of riverbank filtration abstraction for water sustainability

Malaysia is currently facing a water crisis due to prolonged droughts that are affecting the public’s water supply. This is due to increasing climate uncertainty, making the protection of water resources a major issue worldwide. The term “water protection” refers to the evolving practice of maintaining the quality of source water through nature-based solutions, which are becoming increasingly important to ensure water safety and resilience for utilities and municipalities [5]. Since almost all the country’s water treatment facilities extract raw water from river inlets, the situation is made worse by the increasing number of people in polluted waterways. As the government pledges quality of life for its population, the amount of water released from these rivers for public use—whether too little or too much, or too clean or too dirty—has become a priority. The Malaysian government has taken several actions to address the country’s water problems, including releasing groundwater for certain regions as a supplementary water source. However, if water continues to be extracted from groundwater wells, it could put too much pressure on the aquifer and eventually cause the wells to release more water than they can hold and release the pollution such iron and manganese. To meet the demand for mass quantity and quality, this article proposes the use of riverbank filtration (RBF) pre-treatment techniques in water abstraction together with artificial barrier (AB). In the riverbank filtration and AB, it can balance the usage between river and groundwater. This can robust the water protection and environment management, to ensure the future generations, have access to clean water, and achieve water sustainability.