Just when we thought Johor would start the new year pollution-free, we were greeted on Wednesday — the first day of the year — with news of foul odours and discoloured water in Johor Baru's Taman Selesa Jaya Industrial Park.
While the state Environment Department is exploring its next course of action after issuing a frozen food factory there a stop-work order, perhaps Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, Malaysia's very own Academie Francaise that polices the use and abuse of the national language, should "fine" the factory for polluting the meaning of "selesa".
Taman Selesa, indeed! To be fair, the pollution of the water outlet — variously called drain and tributary — into which the factory drains its wastewater happened on or before Dec 21, when the stop-work order was issued.
But pollution, like news, respects no calendar boundary, like the news on Wednesday didn't.
The question is: will Johor ever be free of river pollution? History has long answered the question.
But it is up to those who are tasked with putting an end to river pollution in Johor to stop history repeating itself in the future.
Thus far — reaffirmed by the December dereliction of the frozen food factory in Taman Selesa Jaya — time future is time past.
Let us not be misunderstood. It is not that river pollution only happens in Johor.
No, not at all. The brutal truth is that river pollution is a national disease.
Putrajaya tells us that 25 of our rivers in six states — though we can't be sure if all the thousand odd rivers (or are they river basins?) — have been monitored for pollution — are polluted.
Unsurprisingly, 14 of them are in Johor.
This is one reason why this Leader has gone south. The other reason is because the frozen food factory there is the latest reported case
of a plant being shut down over suspected tributary pollution.
It is not that the regulators in Johor are not regulating at all. They are, but at times they give the impression that they are stuck in stasis.
It is often complaints of foul odours or discoloured water first, followed by shut-down orders pending investigations.
If the people are blessed, the offenders are slapped with punishing penalties, but this is as rare as hen's teeth.
How many times have we read about factory owners being imprisoned? Or their factories being shut down for good? Again, as rare as a four-leaf clover, just to vary the idiom.
Hardcore river polluters love it when regulators go soft on them.
It is so much cheaper to dump the scheduled chemicals in the river and pay the fine than to dispose of them at authorised scheduled waste chemical plants in compliance with the law.
What is more, the nearest such plant is in Negri Sembilan.
One ex-government servant, who spoke anonymously to this newspaper in September, said it would mean the factory owners spending hundreds of thousands of ringgit ferrying the chemicals there.
Instead, they hire rogue lorry owners who are willing to illegally dump the chemicals at a fraction of the cost.
Regulators must make polluters pay dearly for breaking the law, and not allow them to make it punishingly painful for the people and the planet.