I refer to your report Want clean rivers? Scrap Broga incinerator! It may help readers to understand how incinerator issues are handled in other countries.

For the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of Victoria, Australia, the issue of incineration was studied as one option within an integrated strategy of measures which also included:

• transportation and the role of waste transfer stations (which included the very important role of waste classification);
  
• sanitory landfill (which is a professionally managed and technically-controlled landfill operation using high integrity containment systems on geologically and hydro-geological suitable sites) - not beside rivers or water catchment tributaries;
  
• recycling;
  
• oil and solvent recovery; and
  
• chemical fixation of hazardous waste to chemically or physically bond environmentally hazardous materials to eliminate leachate problems.

In this way, the high risk areas of transportation spills, siting of facilities and selection of unsuitable technologies were addressed.

Such studies need to be carried out objectively and professionally. In the above studies, my role was as a specialist from an internationally renowned institute. The technology was proposed by an international consultant with worldwide experience in waste treatment and reviewed by the EPA specialists. The work was reported in public meetings and industry seminars.

In another study conducted for the Department of Environment and Planning NSW, Australia, a proposal for a high-temperature waste disposal incinerator was rejected on the grounds that the technology could not eliminate gas leakage within the plant, and that the dispersion plumes from the stack would fall to ground in an area where a stream flowed to the water supply of the town of Boken Hill some 12 km away.

There are a number of other studies I could quote, each addressing issues involving the public or environment in an objective and professional manner.

Now coming to the Broga incinerator proposal, I can only ask that the good PM or DPM intervene to stop this proposal before Malaysia commits itself to a very costly and unworkable mistake. There are people living within the hazard area and the whole of KL at risk through water pollution.

We, in Malaysia, should learn that projects of this nature must be conceived through proper planning and concern for the public and environment. Vested interests are not the ones to dictate the solutions.

In the two decades of living in Malaysia, I have turned down requests for assistance from a number of people who thought that they could get rich quick by setting up incinerators to burn KL's waste and sell cheap power.

I have seen too many waste dumps, partially burned, with toxic residues leaching into our precious environment. The only stuff that burns cleanly - as its proponents suggest - is our highly priced fuel, and guess who's going to pay dearly for that!