YET again, we find that there is an unscheduled water disruption because of pollution in one of our rivers.
This time around, pollution in Sungai Selangor has left water authorities no choice but to shut down treatment plants, leading to 1,292 areas in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur and more than one million households without the world's most precious resource.
Factories near Sungai Gong, a tributary of Sungai Sembah, which in turn feeds into Sungai Selangor, are believed to be the culprits this time.
Unscheduled water cuts due to pollution seems a perennial problem. A cursory search on the Internet will show that over the past year and a half, there were several unscheduled water cuts, most of them affecting Selangor and KL.
These occurred in July and December last year, and in March, April and June this year. And, who can forget that horrifying pollution in Sungai Kim Kim in Johor? While that particular case did not lead to water disruption, many fell sick and many more had to be evacuated.
Why does it keep happening? Can't the authorities do something about it? Whose fault is it? The authorities? In the present case, we have to ask how this could have happened. After all, only a few months ago Selangor launched a round-the-clock operation to ensure river safety.
What the authorities need to do is come up with a coordinated water management policy. Water management should include ongoing evaluation and revision of water resources.
Safeguarding our water resources is important because even though nearly 70 per cent of the world is covered by water, only 2.5 per cent of it is fresh.
So, we need to better protect our water resources or face the consequences of long-term ecosystem damage.
But while public anger is expected and maybe even a little warranted, we must point out that the authorities cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be blamed completely for such problems.
They can only do so much. The laws could have the highest possible sentence for pollution short of death but if we, the polluters, do not change our mindsets, nothing can be done.
Enforcement is one thing, but as that old saying goes, prevention is better than cure. The onus is on us — to stop polluting our rivers and killing ourselves in the process.
Last year we were told there were 25 dead rivers in Malaysia. Earlier this year, we learned that there were 160 cases of river pollution during the Movement Control Order alone. And that is just the number of cases detected.
Let's break it down — we get our water from certain rivers. River water is processed through treatment plants before it can get to our taps.
But while treatment plants are located only at certain rivers, these same rivers have many tributaries which in turn may also have their own tributaries.
When pollution occurs in one river it can pollute another before leading to yet another before eventually leading to one with the treatment plant. So, no matter what the authorities do, unless we stop polluting our rivers, this problem will continue. And we are not just talking about factories.
We are all responsible for this. We are all in this together.