The Malaysian Insight

FORMING a National River Agency should be an urgent priority to fight illegal dumping in the nation’s rivers said Charles Santiago.

The National Water Services Commission (SPAN) chairman said that such an agency can oversee pollution incidents in rivers nationwide, as opposed to the current systems in place.

“We need national river authority, too many agencies are involved all at once, we need to have a singular entity, with all the small authorities under it,” he told The Malaysian Insight today.

His comments come after the Semenyih Water Treatment Plant temporarily shut down due to pollution on Saturday evening, disrupting water supply to at least 370,000 consumers in four districts in Selangor.

The source of the contamination had been traced to a sewage treatment facility in Bandar Bukit Mahkota.

The plant resumed operations at 6.30am today.

Santiago said, as it stands now, SPAN, the Selangor Water Management Authority (LUAS), Air Selangor and Indah Water Konsortium were all affected and are all carrying out their separate investigations into pollution incidents in the state.

He said the need for this agency is paramount to streamline investigations and catch the culprits quickly.

“The government must look at it seriously,” he said, adding a better system of vigilance is required from Indah Water and Air Selangor.

“They need a better buffer system to detect pollutants in the water immediately, many of these water treatment plants have very old technology and cannot detect pollutants quickly,” he said, adding it is a major problem nationwide because it stems from the way we treat our rivers.

“I think the problem is that we treat our rivers like garbage bins, there are many things that are tossed into them, from animal droppings, sewage, toxic waste materials from factories and so on,” he said.

“This makes Indah Water’s job very difficult,” 

He suggested coming down hard on polluters such as suspending factory licences, prison time and even sacking the management of companies involved.

Environmentalist Andrew Sebastian agreed with Santiago’s idea.

“Basically, we see that there’s a lack of enforcement between local authorities because they do not have resources.

“There is also a lack of leadership in federal and state government, because they do not get everyone together to help solve the issue,” he said, adding that until action is taken, the Klang Valley will continue to wallow in water disruption misery.

“They (authorities) need to stop playing the blame game and get feet on the ground to enforce and monitor the water intake area for Sungai Selangor,” he said.

He said that there are procedures in place to stop incidents like this, but they need to be enforced, adding the public could play an active part, with the government providing rewards to informants.

“We can use river rangers and implement helplines so citizens can call in if they see anyone polluting the rivers,” he said.

“People must understand the importance of the water catchment areas,” he said. – September 29, 2019.