Semantics came into play when the Department of Environment (DOE) broke weeks of silence and finally denied that it approved a proposed 40 MW coal-fired power plant in Sipitang.

rain forest rainforest jungle 010708 01 The proposed plant is within the giant Indian majority-owned Sabah Forest Industries (SFI) area. The once state-owned SFI was previously owned by the Lion Group after it was privatised .

DOE director, Abdul Razak Abdul Manap, clarified that his department merely “verified” the Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA) done on the project.

Abdul Razak was responding to public criticisms that the DOE quietly approved the controversial power plant without consulting stakeholders and without disclosing the consultants who did the DEIA. There were also criticisms that the public had no access to the DEIA.

“We just present our findings to the state government and the final decision is in their hands, not ours,” said Abdul Razak.

“We are not the ones who approve a project. We look at how to provide input in assisting the approving authority. We also look at how to incorporate the environmental aspects into the daily operations of premises.”

Besides the DOE, the State Environmental Protection Department (EPD), which operates under the Environmental Protection Enactment 2002, has a say in natural resources, land development, plantation and rearing.

The DOE operates under the Environmental Quality Act (EQA) 1974 and focuses on enforcement work at industrial premises.

The DOE director however admitted that the DEIA report was “approved by his department on Feb 20 this year before being passed on to SFI and the state government”.

'Worst case scenario'

The approval evidently followed compliance with Section 34A (2) of the EQA 1974 and in accordance with analyses received from representatives of relevant departments. The approval came with a caveat in that “the department did not endorse the coal-fired power plant while conceding that all waste and emission from the project could be contained”.

The DEIA, according to Abdul Razak, is based on the “worst case scenario” where there’s absolutely no control on what comes out from the chimney at SFI when the air is stable.

long lamai sarawak 060707 rain forest “Based on the worst case scenario, the emissions will affect an area of 1.7 kilometres and we are talking about a place which has no residents,” said Abdul Razak. “But now we have advanced technologies that can contain the emissions.”

Even so, the DOE would prefer the proposed power plant to consider other kinds of fuel and has suggested as much to SFI “but none were available at the moment”.

Abdul Razak disclosed that the state government has since set conditions which SFI must comply with to ensure that the impact on the environment is under control and the emissions level complies with standards of emission.

All together, it appears that there are 50 very strictly-worded conditions which the developers must observe. These include implementing an environmental management programme and the submission of regular environmental monitoring reports to the DOE.

Underlining that the DOE meant business, Abdul Razak disclosed that SFI was recently slapped with RM85,000 in fines for illegal discharge of oil spillage at a beach.

Elsewhere, legal action was taken against 128 offenders throughout the country last year under the EQA 1974. Twenty cases are still pending while the remainder has been settled.

Tied to the coal-fired power plant project are plans to increase the capacity of SFI’s pulp and paper factories.

In considering the DEIA, both these components were also studied by the DOE headquarters in Putrajaya “as regards its impact on the environment, according to Abdul Razak, “in line with DOE procedures and analysed by members of the panel vetting the DEIA”.

The DOE director denied that the DEIA on the coal plant was not made public, one criticism levelled at the department, besides the non-disclosure of the consultants involved and failure to consult stakeholders.

'EIA report placed in strategic places'

“The EIA report - not the DEIA - was placed in strategic places for a month after it was submitted to the DOE,” said Abdul Razak. “The public had two weeks to write in to the DOE should they want to voice their opinions.”

“The consultants, who are all registered with the DOE, sought the views of various stakeholders including people living within the vicinity of the proposed plant.”

The proposed coal plant is crucial to SFI’s expansion plans. Chemsain Konsultant Sdn Bhd has already completed a DEIA for these expansion plans.

Under these plans, SFI will raise its plant capacity from the current 144,000 tonnes per annum output to 210,000 tonnes per annum of bleached pulp but total expansion would reach 273,000 tonnes per annum when both total saleable paper and pulp are included.

The proposed SFI expansion will be integrated with the existing mill (referred to as the Project Site in the Chemsain study) within the SFI Complex in Sipitang without reclamation of new land area.

Accessible via the main Sipitang-Sindumin Highway, the mill is located approximately 5.5 km southwest of the township of Sipitang and 151 km from the state capital Kota Kinabalu.

The project area size covers about 400 hectares within the 1,161.05 hectares SFI complex and is about 1.2 km to the east of the Brunei Bay coastline.

The Sabah Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) is leading the opposition against SFI embarking on any of its ambitious expansion plans “until it has fixed the chronic pollution (from SFI) in Brunei Bay” which is shared by Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei.

However, the NGO is dead set against the proposed coal-fired power plant in Sipitang and has instead proposed the use of locally available natural gas which has since been pledged to the Bintulu plant owned by Petronas.