I find it ridiculous that government officers who are supposed to safeguard the rakyat's interest can say one thing one day and change their mind the next.

This is illustrated quite clearly by the action of the director of the department of the environment who said that if indeed the proposed site for the Broga incinerator sits in a water catchment area, the department will not approve of the project.

Unfortunately, when the results of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) study came out, and the site was indeed determined as a water catchment area, the DOE conclusion favoured the building of the said plant.

Could it be possible that the director had forgotten her earlier promise? Or could it be that someone has coerced her to approve the project by force?

Just last week, TV3 highlighted the problems faced by the Jenderam water treatment plant - at this very particular water catchment area - due to pollution upstream.

Things are going to get worse even without the incinerator. I shudder to think what might be the case for hundreds of thousands of homes in Selangor when toxins from the scrubber water (recycled water from incinerators) is released into the river system. I really have no faith in the incinerator in-house water de-contamination processes.

Even in other countries, waste water which has been de-contaminated and is supposedly 'clean' is never released so far upstream and processed for drinking downstream. The DOE's argument that the Jenderam plant is safe as it sits 26km away is flawed because the same river flows from the incinerator - not the other way round.

If the river flows from the Jenderam plant first and then goes to the incinerator, I will be the first to claim that our drinking water is safe.

One only has to look at the mountain range to appreciate that Semenyih/Broga is definitely not a suitable site to build an incineration plant. The proposed site sits on a hill slope which can be unstable and the site sits in a water catchment area.

Imagine five towers, each 150 metres tall reaching for the skies in a pristine area not unlike Cameron Highlands. How can we be so naive?