COMMENT Selangor state executive councillor (exco) for environment Elizabeth Wong revealed during the state assembly meeting recently that another incident of unscheduled mass water disruption was averted because of prompt actions taken by the authorities.

It is believed that the incident involved a concrete factory in Semenyih, which is the source of the oil slick.

Upon receiving a call from members of the public last Tuesday, both the Selangor Water Management Berhad (Luas) and the Selangor Department of Environment (DOE) rushed to the scene and discovered waste oil dump in a drain leading to Sungai Semenyih.

It took nearly 12 hours to clean up the oil dump but thankfully, the oil did not spill into Sungai Semenyih, which feeds water into the Semenyih dam; otherwise, thousands of households will face water disruption for a number of days.

Boils down to attitude

This is not the first incident, and will not be the last incident that such indiscriminate dumping of oil into the river has been detected.

The concrete factory would have been there long enough to realise that they are located upstream of Sungai Semenyih and any waste dumped into the river would not only kill the fishes but also end up in the Semenyih dam.

Whether it is the management or the workers’ fault, this is an issue of the mentality of the people operating the concrete factory. For the owners, it is dollars and cents. To the workers, it is convenience.

By not taking the proactive steps to stop the oil from flowing into the river, are we saying that the workers knew about the oil slick and did nothing about it? What about the management? Where is the supervision and education of the workers?

There is really no reason why they could not have set up a proper waste management unit, especially since they are already in business.

When I was working with a Union Carbide factory in Senawang, I remember one major incident where a drum of monomer (raw chemical used to produce water-based emulsion polymers used for water-based paints and inks) had leaked out of the factory.

There were no complaints from the neighbourhood, but that incident was enough for the entire factory to be shut down and cleaning up work was done based on the factory’s emergency response.

A team of Union Carbide investigators from the headquarters in the US had flown into Malaysia to conduct in-house investigations for several days before making their recommendations for stricter rules about raw material storage.

I wonder if the concrete factory and others in the vicinity  have even looked into setting their emergency response procedures (ERP) and emergency response team (ERT) to prevent another incident from happening.

If not, perhaps, it is time for the authorities to start applying the rod for those who fail to even set up their ERPs and ERTs. A time frame of three months is sufficient for these factories to have their procedures and teams in place.

Good people

The person who contacted the Department of Environment should be complimented for his or her efforts. If the whistleblower had kept an eye closed, this would have led to more frequent water disruptions.

Next is that we have the present director-general of Environment, Halimah Hassan, who is known to be proactive since her time as Federal Territory Department of Environment director back in the mid-90s.

When you have a good director-general, you will have a good team of high-spirited enforcers. Her predecessor, Ir Tan Meng Leng has left behind a good legacy and he, too, was very proactive where the environment is concerned.

The present state exco member for environment, Elizabeth Wong ( left ), who started out in an NGO, is also very firm with those who are polluting the environment.

Despite these good people being put in place, the environment is everyone’s responsibility. As human beings, we are part of the ecosystem, which consists of the fauna and flora, the rivers, air, sea and land around us.

If we continue to pollute the rivers and the air around us, and destroy our rainforests, we are ultimately the ones who will eventually suffer.

The lesson that has to be delivered to all factory owners is that, if they continue to pollute the environment, the heaviest penalty under the Environmental Quality Act of a maximum of RM100,000 or five years’ jail awaits them.

Perhaps, it is time to revise upwards the penalties for polluting the environment.

STEPHEN NG is an ordinary citizen with an avid interest in following political developments in the country since 2008.