THE Selangor Water Management Authority's (LUAS) Pantas squad detected pollution when the water in Sungai Gong, Rawang turned blue on Friday (April 7) at around 1am.
LUAS activated a code yellow alert, which is for incidents that can cause a water treatment plant (WTP) to be shut down.
"The pollution had the potential to disrupt operations of four water treatment plants in Selangor, namely Rantau Panjang WTP and Sungai Selangor Phase 1, 2 and 3 WTP," said Selangor tourism, environment, green technology and Orang Asli affairs committee chairman Hee Loy Sian in a statement on Friday (April 7).
"Following investigations by LUAS, the agency detected the source of the blue water from a factory in Rawang Integrated Industrial Park.
"Further investigations and sampling revealed the same blue-coloured water came from the final tank discharge point and machines from the factory."
Hee said LUAS ordered the factory to immediately stop the effluent discharge and carry out cleaning work in accordance with Section 121(1) of the LUAS Enactment 1999.
"LUAS also opened an investigation paper based on Section 79(1)(C) of the same Act. The factory operator can be fined a minimum of RM200,000 and a maximum of RM1mil, and be imprisoned for not less than three years for causing the pollution," he said.
"At 6am the same day (April 7), the pollution was successfully managed and the water quality in Sungai Gong, located about 500m from the source of pollution, returned to normal (a reading 0 tons and colourless).
He added that remedial measures were due to a biological/bio-remediation treatment project that has been implemented in Sungai Gong and Sungai Sembah since July 2022.
The project is one of the initiatives under the Water Resources Assurance Scheme by the Selangor government to deal with the quality and quantity of water resources in the state.
