This stinks to high heaven!

Foul-smelling, toxic solvent dumped at riverside

SEPANG: Someone has been dumping toxic solvent by the banks of Sg Buah, off the Elite Highway here, causing the water that flows into Sg Semenyih to become dangerous.

Authorities are now racing to clean up the mess by building a bund across the river to stop the water from flowing into Sg Semen­yih and drawing out the contaminated water to be dumped elsewhere.

The 20m bund has been built across Sg Buah as authorities work to restore treated water supply to hundreds of thousands of consumers in four districts in Selangor.

Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamad Azmin Ali said that although the authorities had yet to establish the culprit behind the mess, Selangor Water Management Board Authority (Luas) had found traces of a solvent at three spots in the river, across the border to Negri Sembilan.

The solvent is so toxic that swathes of green grass by the banks were charred.

First-hand look: Azmin (front row, third from right) checking out the contaminated Sg Buah after workers blocked it from flowing into Sg Semenyih.

“We had no choice but to prevent Sg Buah from flowing into Sg Semenyih to restart our water treatment. Our priority now is to ensure the 320,000 account holders get their supply as soon as possible,” he said after checking on the clean-up operations.

The affected consumers are from the Sepang, Kuala Langat, Hulu Langat and Petaling districts.

Apart from the water board, several other agencies, including the Sepang and Kajang municipalities, the Drainage and Irrigation Department and Indah Water Konsortium are involved in the clean-up exercise.

After the bund was in place, pumps were brought in to extract the foul-smelling water from Sg Buah into tankers. The water was transported out in lorries and deposited in a nearby pond.

Azmin said the Luas employees went to the scene after getting reports of the foul smell at about 7.30am on Sunday.

“While conducting checks, they found the smell at its worst near a section of the river at the north-bound Nilai R&R, along the North-South Expressway,” he said.

At about 6.10pm, they found large traces of solvent along the 45.9km mark of the Elite Highway, which links the New Klang Valley Express­way and the southbound stretch of the North-South Expressway.

“It looks as if the solvent had been dumped along a slope causing it to flow into Sg Buah,” Azmin said.