Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud has attempted to explain away last week’s massive accumulation of felled logs and driftwood on the Rejang river as a natural phenomenon.

“I can speculate on the reasons,” Taib was quoted as saying on Oct 11 by the Borneo Post , a local daily, moments after he had urged the public to avoid speculating about the source of the logjam, saying the cause had yet to be investigated.

NONE “Firstly, the rain was so heavy and came in such a short time. If the rainwater were to spread out over four weeks, there will not be enough water to propel the flow of the accumulated debris.

“Secondly, all these areas are undulating and the river water will converge in the valleys, bringing with it debris, leaves, logs and branches. The sudden huge amount of rainwater pushed up the river water level and forced the debris to be rushed downstream in one go.”

Prior to his comments to the press at a local university’s convocation, Taib, minister in charge of logging, had remained silent on this environmental disaster. Damage control was left to Wong Soon Koh, state minister for the environment, and James Masing, land minister. Wong told Bernama the logjam was a “natural calamity” .

An unmitigated disaster

On Oct 8, residents in Sibu and other towns in the Rejang Basin were astonished to find that Malaysia’s largest river had been clogged up by floating logs, over nearly half of its 563km length.

NONE The logjam obstructed express boats, temporarily cutting off towns dependent on the river for transportation. The floating wood also destroyed two logging bridges and damaged five jetties.

Local longhouse communities rely on these jetties to get their children to schools or clinics. Countless fish in the river died because of debris caking their gills. The cost of damage to infrastructure has been estimated at RM2.7 million.

“ penans meet suhakam 130208 see chee how Sarawakians will suffer greater losses in terms of socio-economic costs and ecological damage,” Sarawak PKR information chief See Chee How ( right ) warned in a press conference yesterday.

He censured the state government for failing to contain the ecological disaster, and for showing “poor governance and incompetence” in dealing with the consequences of its development policies.

See said he believed the logs had originated from Putai and Nungan in the upper reaches of the Baleh river, a tributary of the Rejang.

He criticised Masing, MP for Baleh, for blaming other cabinet ministers for the disaster, instead of accepting collective responsibility as a member of the cabinet himself.

“However, he is not the minister who issued timber concession licences for the indiscriminate logging in Ulu Baleh, which had caused tonnes of timber mass and enormous debris to flow down the Rejang river,” See remarked.

Dismal history of environmental damage

Taib declared that the logjam was unprecedented. “I have asked the people to investigate the cause as this is the first time we have had such a thing. So we should not just jump to conclusions,” he declared.

james masing Taib’s claim contradicts statements made by Masing, his land minister. According to the Star , Masing ( right ) had described a mass of logs collecting in 2008 at Sungai Gat and in 2009 in Sungai Tunoh. Masing said this clearly showed that logging regulations were not being followed.

Many critics, ranging from the national Auditor-General’s department, environmental NGOs, and the pension investment fund in Norway, have accused Sarawak of unregulated logging and environmental destruction.

Last year, a local timber company, Interhill, paid for an external report on its logging practices, in an attempt to placate worried international investors. However, this public relations effort backfired badly: the Blackett Report commissioned by Interhill described unsustainable logging, serious environmental degradation, violations of forestry laws, threats of gangster attacks on protestors, and broken promises of compensation to locals.

Wary of official explanations

Many Sarawakians are sceptical about official state government NONE explanations of disasters. When the haze from forest fires choked Sarawak in 1997, Deputy Chief Minister George Chan ( left ) blamed the El Niño dry spell, and government officials condemned Sarawakian shifting cultivators for starting fires.

However, environmentalists highlighted satellite images showing hotspots in areas cleared for oil palm estates in Borneo and Sumatra, and held Malaysian and Indonesian plantation companies responsible for the haze, because the plantations had been using fire to clear scrubland.

Taib did not play a major role in public relations damage control during the haze. He left Sarawak when the haze emergency was declared, purportedly on “official business overseas”.

Potential sources of the logjam

While the Natural Resource and Environmental Board (NREB) is preparing a preliminary report on the logjam, speculation is already rife that logging companies were to blame. Piles of unused wood on riverbanks, the results of over-logging, are easily visible to anyone traveling up the Rejang or Baram. Some logs are awaiting transport down to the port in Sibu port by river barge, while some less valuable specimens are being left to rot.

A local source familiar with the logging industry says heavy rain last week may have worsened pre-existing erosion and caused landslides, depositing these heaps of timber into the river.

Even during dry weather, there is a disturbing amount of driftwood and yellow mud floating down the Rejang. Logging and plantation companies have contributed to this massive soil erosion, through deforestation and the clearing of land to build camps, sawmills, factories and roads.

Sibu and other towns have been badly struck by flooding in the past decade, a result of increasing siltation. The logjam may have been an enormously accelerated and magnified form of this steady stream of debris.

Several commentators point out the massive Bakun Dam, above the Rejang, was scheduled to start filling or impoundment two days after the logjam occurred. They suggest the dam developers may have dumped debris accumulated from construction into the river, rather than transporting it away or trying to burn it.

NONE The Star had witnessed “huge logged areas” in the Bakun area being put to the torch in July 2009. At the time, Sarawak Conservation Action Network co-ordinator Raymond Abin ( left ) had protested against the burning of vast amounts of unwanted wood, saying “this is a shortcut for the developer as a way of getting rid of the debris instead of carting it away.”

On the day the logjam reached Sibu, Wong Soon Koh took pains to deny that the planned Bakun Dam impoundment had contributed to the pollution.

Yesterday, Chan also refuted reports of over-logging, saying Sarawak adopted sustainable forestry practices as “recognised by the International Tropical Timber Organisation”. He said heavy rain was to blame, saying a spike in rainfall had been caused by the La Niña weather phenomenon.

Whether the root cause is indeed La Niña, El Niño or some other mischievous little child, Sarawakians are impatient for answers.

KERUAH USIT is a human rights activist - ‘anak Sarawak, bangsa Malaysia’. This weekly column is an effort to provide a voice for marginalised Malaysians. Keruah Usit can be contacted at keruah_usit@yahoo.com .