No garbage incinerator in our backyard
By JULIET LAI
Have you heard of Broga?
Broga is Kuala Lumpur’s little green lung. A quiet little town 40 km from KL with rubber estates, durian orchards, palm oil plantations, a lake, a dam. Broga is also the chosen site for a RM2 billion project - the building of a 1,500 tonne incinerator.
What is an incinerator? It is a furnace that burns rubbish. It burns and burns waste until nothing is left but ash and gas. These residues are highly toxic. The chemical by products are dioxin and furan. Exposure to dioxin damages the immune system, causes birth defects and is a class one cancer-causing agent.
Broga is also where the Semenyih dam is. This water catchment area serves 333 residential areas in Klang Valley, including Bangsar, PJ, Puchong, Subang, Klang and Shah Alam. About 2 million people drink from this reservoir.
The incinerator is to be built here - practically straddling our water source.
Shocking?
Not quite yet. Observe the manner in which our government handled the project.
The proposed site was originally Kampung Bohol, Puchong. Met with strong protests and political pressure from the residents against the project, the government relented and named a new site. It took them two months to choose Broga. Two months - almost as if decided without deliberation or in-depth study. Observe the facts that they disregarded:
1. The nearest residential area from the chosen site is a mere 2 km away, the incinerator is practically at their backyard.
2. There are 260,000 people living within a 5 km radius.
3. Project work began even before receiving EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) approval.
Even if none of the above facts stand, one would think that an environmentally sensitive area such as a dam would be the last place considered to construct an incinerator, let alone Asia’s largest incinerator.
Naturally, the people of Broga protested. They urged the government to answer their questions. Issues like the how the massive amount of waste is to be transported to the site (an estimated 350 trucks a day), whether the highly noxious residue of ash resulting from the incineration is properly and responsibly disposed of, why the blatant disregard of the project’s obvious environmental impact. Their concerns were met with a stony wall of silence. Instead of proper information dissemination from the government to placate the rightful wrath of its citizens, they ordered a media blackout.
The fight has been going on since 2003.
The community brought the Selangor government to court. Despite the pending lawsuit, the Selangor land and mines department have diligently begun acquiring land around the site in a rather disreputable manner. They have issued letters to Broga landowners and urged them to collect cheques from the department. They have harassed and called the residents, insisting on their account numbers to bank in the cash.
A film by Ong Ju Lin, titled Alice Lives Here, opened my eyes to the community’s struggle. It was formerly known as Clean Shit.
Alice is a courageous heroine, a furniture factory clerk turned activist. Alice, despite being a devout Christian, has no time for church. She is consumed with reading legal literature and spending her cheques on land act law books. Alice tirelessly compiles information about incinerators and educates herself and her neighbours.
Despite court cases that were postphoned five times, despite the media blackout, despite the giants she has to face, Alice is still adamant in her fight against the cancer factory that sits upon our water source.
The next court hearing is in May. Till then, I hope the voices of the Broga community are heard.
—
JULIET LAI is a contributing writer for theCICAK.
She eats books, craves the wilderness, loves skin, and is submissive. Juliet is a culture junkie, a poemless poet and a travel addict. She is dead without music and sleeps with poetry (sometimes). Visit her site.
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Comment of the week
I defend my right as a Malaysian to talk about anything that concerns Malaysia.
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For a better opinion piece, you should strive for more objectivity in your argument. I think this is a good piece, however, I would like to hear what the government is saying about this (whether stupid reasons or good ones), the opinion from the scientific community etc.
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Incinerators are merely an easy way out in dealing with waste. The deeper issue would be why do we have so much waste.
As for the EIA charades, it’s sad to see such games being played.
Liz: for the other side of the story, try the mainstream Malaysian media
The reasoning is, if I recall correctlly, best way to deal with waste in the Klang Valley and it’s a new technology.
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u know nothing about incinerator and here u are condeming the G for no reason….i am studing in japan and guess what the nearest incinarator is just 1 km away from my home…and i have never even caught a flu here….u should watch Buletin Utama and watch Karam singh Walia then u will know why our G desperately need to built this thing….if u think that this thing is going to pollute the area(which is definetely not true as the hazardous gasses will be treated) then u should realize by now that the whole malaysia is already being polluted by tonnes of garbage that polluted our air and river….when other country have moved further for more advanced tech our own malaysian are the ones who doesnt want to change and want to stick with the primitive way…God Bless Malaysia
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I thought that the article did not strongly condemn the incinerator as much as it did the actions of our government which lacked sensitivity in dealing with the communities involved and making available information to address their concerns. This lack of information is what makes the voices of Broga and this article, seem one-sided.
The government’s cost-benefit analyses and verifications on side effect impact levels should have been made available and discussed in the open.
Ultimately, it will be us, the greater majority of the MAlaysian public who will judge whether or not this is benefiting us.
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this is a fun read, relevant to this discussion.
“Why I Am Not An Environmentalist:
The Science of Economics Versus the Religion of Ecology”
by Steven E Landsburg from the 1993 book “The Armchair Economist”
http://www.shrubwalkers.com/prose/list/not.html
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Isn’t ecology a science and economics (i.e. free-market capitalism) a religion?
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I agree with joe about the probable of incinerator being dangrerous to the residents. It was also stated in one of my EST (English for Science and Technology) articles in my class that emited gas from the incinerator will not go out to the open air (or will be neutralize I don’t remember). Though the dam water near the site will be a big concern. The bad smell from the rubbish taken in is dealt with by storing it in a compartment of the incinerator.
Recycling actually helps alot in reducing rubbish. My school is doing it and this year the rubbish rate in my school compound drop tremendously. Recycling Project should really be implanted in each school because it really benefits alot and saves alot of money instead of building an incinerator in the future. (It is a fact and it has been proven before my eyes.)
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My teacher is making me research incinerators.
Honestly I think that they are a bad idea.
Yes they replace fossil fuels and whatever but is that really worth risking our health and health of those younger than us.
Research has shown that incinerators are only put in poor arears.
Isn’t that funny! The rich people get life easier, they are the ones gaining the money from this but they won’t have incinerators in their area!! TYPICAL!
Why do people continue to destroy our earth? It’s a question that we shouldn’t really have to be asking if you ask me.
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