Water
01
12,611 million litres a day.
What Malaysia's licensed water operators supplied in 2024, 60% of it to homes — read live from SPAN's returns on the data.gov.my open API. What we use, whom the pipes reach, and what the rivers say.
Consumption · 2024
12,611
million litres a day (MLD), everything the licensed operators supplied
Domestic share
59.7%
went to homes; the rest to commerce, industry and institutions
At home, per person
221 L
a day — 2024 domestic consumption over DOSM's 2024 estimate of 34.0 million people
Official latestAnnual regulatory returns, not live telemetry — the series currently runs to 2024, and the publisher marks its newest year provisional. The page refetches daily and shows its retrieval time below.
SPAN / NRES / DOSM — water_consumption (annual, millions of litres per day), via the data.gov.my open API · retrieved 2026-10-12 23:07 UTC
Annual returns by licensed water operators to SPAN, the water services regulator, compiled with NRES and DOSM. Values are millions of litres per day (MLD). W.P. Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya are subsumed under Selangor. Series 2003–2024; the latest year is provisional per the dataset's own caveat.
The long view
02
Up 89% in 21 years.
The pipes delivered 6,675 million litres a day in 2003 and 12,611 in 2024. Domestic use grew 71%; non-domestic grew 123% — homes, not industry, drive the national curve.
Domestic (MLD)
Non-domestic (MLD)
Millions of litres per day, national total by sector. The latest year is provisional per the dataset's own caveat.
Geography
03
State by state.
The piped-water access dataset could not be read from the open API just now. The table returns when the feed does.
What this chapter cannot show
Reservoir levels and live river telemetry have no open feed — every figure on this page is an annual return, so a dry dam or a river rising tonight would not appear here. The climate chapter's river watch explains that gap and sketches what a live feed would make possible.
Did you know
Selangor takes 31% of the nation's piped water.
3,879 of the 12,611 MLD consumed nationwide in 2024 — and the dataset folds W.P. Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya into Selangor's figure, so this is the whole Klang Valley drinking, washing and manufacturing on one line.
Computed from SPAN/NRES/DOSM water_consumption, 2024
38 of 144 river basins were polluted on ammonia in 2024.
On DOE's other two measures the same rivers look far cleaner: 12 basins classified polluted on biochemical oxygen demand and 12 on suspended solids. Only 42% of basins were clean on ammoniacal nitrogen, against 81% on BOD.
Computed from DOE (JAS) water_pollution_basin, 2024
89% more water than 2003.
The pipes delivered 6,675 MLD in 2003 and 12,611 MLD in 2024. Domestic use grew 71% over the same span.
Computed from SPAN/NRES/DOSM water_consumption, 2003–2024
Deep data
03.3
Four cautions before quoting this page.
Everything here is administrative data — licensee returns to the regulator SPAN, and DOE's basin classification. That makes it honest about what was supplied and connected, and silent about several things the word “water” implies.
Consumption series
2003–2024
annual MLD by state and sector, from SPAN licensee returns
River basins monitored
144
classified by DOE in 2024 on three pollutant measures
Consumption is not demand met
These are the litres that moved through licensed operators' systems. A household on its own well, a factory pumping river water under licence, or demand that went unserved in a dry spell — none of it appears in the consumption figure.
What “access” counts
The access dataset counts households with a connected treated piped supply, against DOSM's household counts. It says nothing about pressure, continuity or quality at the tap — and by its own caveat, a household that chooses well water counts as unconnected, not unreached.
Non-revenue water is not published here
Non-revenue water — treated water lost between the plant and the meter — is one of the industry's headline metrics, but it is not published in these datasets, and this page will not guess at it.
The vintage question
The consumption series currently run to 2024, and the basin classification to 2024; the portal lists the next update as unconfirmed. Every growth figure on this page is computed against those vintages, and the newest year may be revised.
SPAN / NRES / DOSM — water_consumption (annual, millions of litres per day), via the data.gov.my open API · retrieved 2026-10-12 23:07 UTC
Annual returns by licensed water operators to SPAN, the water services regulator, compiled with NRES and DOSM. Values are millions of litres per day (MLD). W.P. Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya are subsumed under Selangor. Series 2003–2024; the latest year is provisional per the dataset's own caveat.
DOE (JAS) — water_pollution_basin (river-basin quality classes), via the data.gov.my open API · retrieved 2026-10-12 23:07 UTC
The Department of Environment classifies monitored river basins as clean, slightly polluted or polluted on three measures: biochemical oxygen demand, ammoniacal nitrogen and suspended solids. 144 basins monitored in 2024.
Water sits between two other shelves. The rain that fills these basins is watched live in Climate; the dams, plants and pipes that move it belong to Infrastructure.