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SHAH ALAM: Selangor Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari suspects foul play might be involved in the Sungai Selangor odor pollution incident today, stating that some neighborhoods are “unhappy” with the state government’s efforts to solve the frequently occurring problem .
He also suspects that irresponsible parties are familiar with the inspection trend by law enforcement officials, as the river pollution is believed to have occurred outside of the team’s working hours.
“The location of today’s incident is believed to be a little higher than Sungai Gong, Rawang, which means that the culprits who removed (the solvent fluid), whether intentionally or not, seem to know the locations where we took water samples. .
“Since we stopped the operations of the four water treatment plants (LRAs) this afternoon, our staff have been working hard to ensure that the contamination is contained.
“I was informed that as of 5 pm today, the odor contamination reading has been reduced to 2 TON (odor threshold number),” he told reporters in the lobby of the Selangor State Legislative Assembly ( DUN) here today.
Amirudin also described the odor pollution incident in Sungai Selangor as a challenge as the state government passed the Selangor Water Management Authority (LUAS) (Amendment) Bill 2020 during yesterday’s assembly session.
He said that although the penalties provided for in the amendment could not yet be applied to resolve today’s odor pollution incident, there were other penalties under other acts that could be imposed on the culprits, such as the Environmental Quality Act of 1974.
Speaking on the LUAS (Amendment) 2020 bill, Amirudin said it would be published after being signed by the Sultan of Selangor Sultan Sharafuddin Idris Shah, or one month after the approval date of the assembly.
Amendments to the bill include causing water contamination due to odor and taste as a crime, raising the fine to a minimum of RM200,000 and up to RM1 million, making incarceration mandatory, authorizing the director or officer in charge of enforce the law to make warrantless seizures, make polluters pay LUAS the cost of cleaning up the contamination, and give LUAS the power to offer rewards to whistleblowers.
Four LRAs, namely Sungai Selangor LRA Phases 1, 2, 3 and Rantau Panjang LRA were ordered to close today due to odor contamination, resulting in unscheduled water supply interruptions to some 1,139,008 homes in the Klang Valley.
The outage covered 1,279 areas in Kuala Lumpur, Petaling, Klang, Shah Alam, Kuala Selangor, Hulu Selangor, Gombak and Kuala Langat.
