Anatomy of a disaster
The incident of toxic fumes from a polluted river in Johor poisoning the air and sending people to hospital was a disaster waiting to happen.
SOME time in the morning of March 7 – before students of the nearby SK Taman Pasir Putih and SM Taman Pasir Putih arrived for classes – a truck must have driven up to the bridge overlooking Sungai Kim Kim.
Although what happened next has still to be established, what is not in doubt is that the truck then dumped chemical waste into the river that runs through much of Pasir Gudang town before joining the sea in the Johor Strait.
For many of the area’s residents, for fishermen living along the river and people in the surrounding coastal villages, such dumping is not new.
They have long complained to the authorities that the water in the river – and even in town drains – turns black whenever it rains, saying they suspected that pollution from industrial waste was at fault.
Pasir Gudang, about a half-hour’s drive from Johor Baru, is an industrial port city and, apart from the fishing villages along the coast, various industries, including chemical plants, have set up bases here.
Only 2km away from Seletar Airport over in Singapore across the Straits of Johor, the town has also been in the news recently following a dispute over airspace between Malaysia and the island state. And then came much worse news as the chemical spill put people in hospital and shut down schools.
Because this time, the waste did not just turn Sungai Kim Kim black. This time, the waste vaporised, producing noxious fumes that sickened schoolchildren and residents in Taman Pasir Putih and Taman Kota Masai nearby.
The victims, complaining of dizziness and vomiting, were rushed to hospitals in ambulances. Pictures and footage of medical teams wearing masks attending to those overwhelmed by the fumes gripped the nation.
At the end of the first day, over 100 victims had been recorded.
In only slightly more than a week – as the fumes spread further from the original dump – there were almost 3,000 cases, and 111 schools and 92 kindergartens and nurseries in the district were closed.
The bridge where the dumping had taken place was cordoned off and the authorities – including even the Defence Ministry – moved in. Although no emergency was declared, masks were sold out in the area. The situation was so dire that Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad postponed a scheduled meeting and flew out to Pasir Gudang last Thursday for a personal briefing.
While a committee has been set up to carry out a scientific investigation into the incident, experts have since suggested that the current dry and hot weather might have caused the chemicals in the water to vaporise faster.
Water quality and modelling specialist Dr Zaki Zainudin says that the incident resulted from a “perfect storm” of factors affecting Sungai Kim Kim.
“There are four factors leading to the pollution of the river. There has been illegal dumping and discharge of chemicals – some of which could be legal – into the river over the years. The villagers told me that the drains turn black when it rains.
“There has also been rapid development in the Tanjung Langsat industrial area adjacent to the river. The industrial effluents from the factories are either discharged into Sungai Kim Kim or Sungai Kopok,” he points out.
Dr Zaki says there also appears to be a plant upstream of Sungai Kim Kim in a residential area which might also be discharging sewage into the river.
“On top of this, Sungai Kim Kim is affected by tides. So it’s a much slower flowing river, leading to the build-up of pollutants.
“The river has been progressively deteriorating – this is very clear. It’s only that the dumping has never been this large in scale previously,” says Dr Zaki.
The expert shared on his blog and Facebook page two pictures he took from a bridge over Sungai Kim Kim, one showing greenish water in 2012 and the other showing black water in 2017 (see images top).
“Such a rapid deterioration in water quality within a span of just a few years,” he laments.
Reports actually suggest that Sungai Kim Kim has been a dumping ground for chemical waste for the past 10 years.
A team from The Star that arrived at ground zero on March 8 spotted the Fire and Rescue Department’s Hazardous Materials Unit (Hazmat) personnel carrying dozens of bags presumably containing toxic waste. A Department of Environment (DOE) staff member collapsed despite being suited up protectively and had to seek medical attention.
In a press conference before that, Energy, Technology, Science, Climate Change and Environment Minister Yeo Bee Yin revealed that analysis of the samples taken by the DOE from the river showed that they contained benzene, acrolein, acrylonitrile, chloride, methene, hydrogen, toulene, xylene, ethybenzene and d-limonene, among other chemicals.
D-limonene is usually found in the recycling process of tyres.
The owner of an illegal tyre recycling factory is expected to be charged under Section 34B of the Environmental Quality Act 1974, which carries a jail term of up to five years and a RM500,000 fine.
In a statement, Sahabat Alam Malaysia called on both the DOE and the Johor state government to take stern action against the perpetrators.
“We are of the view that urgent and immediate action is needed to expedite the prosecution of the perpetrators of what are serious environmental crimes.
“We are also wondering what remedial actions are being taken to clean up the river so that the toxic chemicals and fumes from the waste dumping are prevented from affecting the health and environment of people in the surroundings, including the schools” says the NGO’s president S.M. Mohamed Idris.
While Yeo told reporters in Parliament last Thursday that phase two of the river clean-up is expected to be completed within a week or less – four contractors were appointed for this purpose – people are now asking whether more measures should have been carried out earlier before the situation worsened.
In a statement widely reported in some media, the Fire and Rescue Department’s director-general said that the agencies involved had decided to leave the chemicals unattended due to the high cost of cleaning them up. Association of Water and Energy Research Malaysia president S. Piarapakaran is shocked by that decision.
“Every chemical can be evaluated and potential harm will be known. How did the responsible agencies come to the conclusion that this chemical should be left as it is?” he said in a statement.
Pointing out that Section 47 of the Environment Quality Act gives the DOE the power to recover costs and expenses, Piarapakaran urged the federal government to investigate the incident in a transparent manner, and for action to be taken against those responsible for neglect.
“We hope that the federal government acts swiftly.”
In the meantime, Dr Zaki, who has carried out research on the water quality of rivers around the country, has a new worry.
In October 2018, Water, Land and Natural Resources Minister Dr Xavier Jayakumar was reported as saying that in 2017, river pollution had increased by 2% compared to 2013.
“My concern is that many more rivers may be affected as well,” Dr Zaki says.
Just hours after he spoke to us last Thursday, waste dumping was reported in Sungai Klang, which has been tainted with an oily substance believed to be a chemical.