Recently our Education Ministry has suspended all water based co-curricular activities for schools. This is due a death caused by rat urine infection in Kedah. While this is a good move to prevent further harm to the people, it is also a little sad for nature lovers as yet another recreational activity has been taken away from us.

In the past, playing in rivers and waterfalls was something many of us can experience. Today, the colour of the river itself lets you know that it is dangerous to jump in. Even though the suspension of water activities currently only apply to school activities, it may one day affect all of us.

As more and more of us are living in urban areas, our contact with nature slowly get less, and this may be one of the reason why so many of us no longer put river protection as a priority. We must not forget however, that rivers are still important to the urban population.

In year 2014, Malaysia extracted an average of 16,960 million litres a day (MLD) of water for our water supply services, and 14,088 MLD of it was extracted directly from rivers. This means that most of the water supply that comes through our tap is sourced from our rivers.

Some of us have the perception that river pollution is always caused by greedy businessman with their toxic-spewing factories, but you should also know that there are other causes, many which we can control. Take the rat urine infection case as an example. There was a previous case where a similar recreational spots was polluted by this rat urine, and the cause was found to be the rubbish that tourist left behind. If the area was clean, there would be no rats in the first place.

The river can also be polluted in ways that we do not realise. One of it is when we throw things into the drain. Did you know that our drain flows into our rivers? Although we have rubbish traps, it cannot stop things like oil, detergents or chemicals. As for dangerous bacteria, one source that we often overlook is septic tanks.

Did you know that many of our houses, even in urban areas, do not have a sewage system that connects directly to our sewage service provider? Those houses most likely use a septic tank, which is a temporary storage for our home's sewage. These tanks need to be emptied every three years, and consumers themselves need to call the desludging services.

However, a significant number of people do not do this, or may not even realise that they are using these septic tanks. This can result in raw sewage going straight into our rivers.

The responsibility of river protection should not be pushed onto the government authorities only. As Malaysian, all of us should contribute to conserving our precious nature. Even simple actions such as cleaning up our rubbish after a picnic can do a lot. If we continue dirtying the rivers, we will one day have a shortage of clean water supply. If we continue ignoring this problem, our children will never know that refreshing feeling of playing in the river.

NAH KOK WAI is research and policy executive, Forum Air Malaysia.