How to save a river - and public health?

NST: A cocktail of chemicals, sewage and farm run-off is killing Sungai Selangor, which supplies water to most of Klang Valley.
Experts are also wondering if odourless heavy metals like mercury and chemicals with gender-bending effects on animals are present in the river.
Their fears are timely with the recent contamination of the river by high levels of ammonia, which left many Klang Valley residents with smelly piped water.
Although the condition of the river is terrible, it isn’t the worst around.
That dubious honour goes to rivers like Sungai Langat, which provides 35 per cent of treated water to the area.
It has far more sources of pollution than Sungai Selangor, and more water intake points.
Still, an expert on water resource management fears the worst for Sungai Selangor, which provides 60 per cent of treated water to Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Selangor.
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia’s Institute of Environmental and Water Resource Management director Prof Dr Zaini Ujang said a radical policy change on river pollution was needed to save the river, and safeguard public health.
"If this continues, Sungai Selangor is a ‘gone case’ from the environmental point of view. We need a policy change and we need it by tomorrow. The public’s health is at risk," he said.
Here are the facts:

• 19,000 tonnes of hazardous waste like cans of insecticide and unconsumed medication enter dumps or landfills and, eventually, rivers daily;

• There are 9,400 individual septic tanks and 2,000 traditional sewerage systems (pour flushes) within the river’s wider catchment area; and,

• There are no guidelines on the best practices in agriculture on pollution control for pig, cattle, goat, poultry and aquaculture farms.

Zaini said the mix of human, industrial and household waste going into Sungai Selangor was compounded by effluents from farms.

"There are rules on the size of chicken farms, the number of chickens per compartment, the kind of housing chickens require but nothing at all about pollution control in the guidelines on best practices in agriculture."
He said many countries made every facility, including landfills, industries and farms discharge wastewater into a public sewer system and pay for it.
Only one party treated waste, he said, and farms and factories would not have to worry about setting up their own plants to prevent wastewater from entering rivers.
However, he said, such a system required a high-tech, efficient and well-maintained sewerage system, which Malaysia did not have.
And though transforming and modernising the sewerage system will cost millions, he believes this is the best option to keep Sungai Selangor from turning into a public sewer.
Prof Dr P. Agamuthu of University of Malaya said that among Sungai Selangor’s most severe problems was illegal dumping of household and industrial waste.

"Sungai Selangor has become a major receptacle for such waste," said the lecturer from the Institute of Biological Sciences at the Faculty of Science.

The Selangor Water Management Authority (Luas) is also concerned, citing its discovery of disused roof frames and concrete blocks in the murky water.
Luas principal assistant director Mohd Said Dikon said Selangor was water-starved and could not depend on groundwater.

"We don’t know when the planned water transfer from Pahang will take place. So, Sungai Selangor is a water source we cannot afford to lose."
The unscrupulous also wait until a downpour before releasing wastewater into the river without treatment, said Agamuthu, who has studied waste disposal in Malaysia the last 20 years.
This way, chemicals are diluted and the polluter’s actions go undetected.
It does not help that authorities have seen fit to allow at least 70 per cent of the country’s legal landfills and dumps to be located near rivers.
These landfills discharge treated, semi-treated or in some cases untreated leachate into rivers. All other litter on the ground or in drains also end up there.
"Sungai Selangor is no stranger to this and the contamination is critical," said Agamuthu.
He proposed a Sungai Selangor remediation scheme that would tackle pollution flowing into the river and give it a new lease of life.
"Ammonia we can smell. But what about heavy metals like mercury? What about the invisible chemicals that disrupt the human endocrine system?" said Zaini.