‘Better coordination needed on reporting water pollution’

 

The Selangor government hopes all agencies related to the environment and water resource in the state will improve coordination between one another in the event of water pollution in future.

State Tourism, Environment, Green Technology and Orang Asli Affairs Committee chairperson, Hee Loy Sian (above) said only with better coordination could action be expedited to check the issue of water resource contamination.

“Through the Selangor State Water Resource Pollution Emergency Committee meeting on Monday, I was told that the delay in action against pollution taking place at the sewage treatment plant of Indah Water Konsortium (IWK) at Taman Velox, Rawang recently was due to poor coordination.

“I do not want to point fingers at anyone but what I see is that communication among Pengurusan Air Selangor Sdn Bhd (Air Selangor), Lembaga Urus Air Selangor (LUAS), National Water Services Commission (SPAN), IWK and local authorities should be improved,” he told a media conference today.

This was because a notice, in the form of a letter from IWK on the water pollution incident, was only received by the Selayang Municipal Council about 10 days from the date of the incident when the state government has a ‘WhatsApp Group Ops Sumber Air” involving all top officers of the agencies involved.

“The WhatsApp group involved all top officers, including me. So, if pollution occurs and is informed through the platform, we will be able to act faster. Nonetheless, I was told what happened in Taman Velox was not informed via the application.

“Therefore, I hope coordination between one another would be improved in future so that all incidents (of water resource pollution) would be announced faster so that the issue could be resolved quickly,” he said.

On Nov 10, the Sungai Selangor water treatment plants at Rantau Panjang, as well as Phase 1, 2 and 3, were halted following pollution to the raw water intake point believed to be from a small and medium industry area in Taman Velox which caused the unscheduled water supply disruption involving 1,139,008 account users in the Klang Valley.

In this regard, Hee was told the operation at the Rantau Panjang treatment plant was stopped for almost two hours from 7.10pm yesterday after detecting odour pollution measuring one TON (odour measurement) at the plant water intake.

He said the odour pollution was suspected to be from drain water washed together chemical residues in a heavy rain into Sungai Gong and the water intake point.

However, Hee said the halt of Rantau Panjang plant did not cause water supply disruption to consumers as operation resumed at 9.30pm after the problem was resolved.

- Bernama