A pattern begins to form. It is perhaps even a uniquely Malaysian one.
A river gets polluted. The media rush to report. Enforcement officers run helter skelter. Men and ministers converge to control the crisis. Days become weeks, and weeks become months. Nothing is heard of it again until another crisis causes a pell-mell.
There is even a modern name for it: the Sungai Kim Kim syndrome. Enforcement must be better than this.
Many Malaysian rivers are polluted. Period. They have been for a long time. The July 20 diesel pollution at the raw water source in Sungai Selangor is but the latest.
Chemical pollution of Sungai Kim Kim is another national tragedy. Many have shed tears at the banks of the now close-to-dead Sungai Kim Kim. For at least 10 sad years.
According to the Department of Environment’s (DoE) 2017 data, there were 579 rivers in 2008, but today only 477 are left. But the national worry is not the missing 102 rivers. It is: what will become of the 477 remaining? Sad signs are beginning to appear.
Of the 477 rivers, only 219 were said to be clean. The rest were either slightly polluted (207) or polluted (51). If we start applying pollution sub-indices, the picture becomes uglier and more alarming.
For instance, if sewage, agro-based waste and industrial pollutants are brought into the equation, no river in Malaysia can be said to be clean. It can’t get more dismal than this.
Malaysian Nature Society vice-president Vincent Chow says the government has to go back to basics: find out what went wrong with our rivers and work from there. If we took a wrong policy turn, we must reverse it. Engineering must not be let loose on its wild path.
Ecology must tame it. Vincent says our knee-jerk reactions spell the end of our rivers. He should know.
Vincent, a consultant ecologist by profession, has conducted a number of studies in Johor. Over the years, he has watched several rivers die. Others like Sungai Kim Kim is 75 per cent dead. As of yesterday, its water was all black. Might as well call it Sungai Dim Dim.
Vincent has a point. River pollution is a big picture problem. There needs to be a single body. DoE director-general Norlin Jaafar agrees, though with a caveat. A study needs to be done.
Let’s call it the River Management Authority, a national organ with oversight of all matters riverine. Malaysia has the resources but they are housed under so many roofs.
Such a national body, shadowed by similar organs at the state-level, would be able to solve the age-old problems of the three “Cs” — coordination, continuity and consistency.
Economics must not be allowed to override ecology. Should this happen, it will not only end our riparian dream, but also put us to a permanent sleep.
But many Malaysians seem not to be too bothered about river pollution killing us.
To them, rivers are dumping grounds by another name. Businesses, too, are putting profit before people by discharging wastes into rivers.
It is to tame such people that laws are passed. And it is the job of the enforcers to see to it that they get behind prison walls.