Teluk Bahang Dam

This guide to Teluk Bahang Dam on Penang Island traces how a dam planned in 1964 sat shelved for nearly thirty years while George Town's water supply, dependent on the Ayer Itam Dam, kept straining under a growing island. It follows the 1992 revival, a Chinese engineering firm brought in to finally build here, and the 1999 inauguration by then deputy prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. Costs climbed past two hundred forty million ringgit before the dam was finished, and the crest still doubles as a road close to the coast.