Cleaning up Malaysia's rivers of life

Kuala Lumpur follows efforts in Seoul and Vancouver in effort to revive its toxic rivers

In the hills to the east of Kuala Lumpur, the Klang River is clean enough for visitors to play in.But just a few hundred metres downstream, the water darkens and rubbish clogs the banks.

By the time it reaches the city centre, the river is the pale brown of milky tea and so toxic it's dangerous to touch.

But after decades of neglect, the government is spending more than $1bn to revive the Klang and Gombak rivers that gave Kuala Lumpur - which translates roughly as "muddy confluence" - its name.

"The River of Life is one of the cornerstone projects in Kuala Lumpur, in addition to public transport," said Mohd Azharuddin Mat Sah, a director of the government's Performance Management and Delivery Unit, who is coordinating the project.

"We learned from other cities like Seoul, Vancouver, upgrading and beautifying the areas around the river really helps a city become more livable. And Kuala Lumpur is naturally lucky to have two rivers flowing through it."

Murky waters

In total, the project covers 110 kilometres of water within the city and aims to transform the rivers from Class IIIv - toxic to touch - into Class IIb, or water clean enough for leisure activities, by 2020.

As Kuala Lumpur has grown and expanded, the waterways have become a dumping ground not only for homeowners, but factories and business owners too.

When it rains, sewage from overloaded septic tank systems is washed into the river, along with the soil from the scores of new developments under way around the city.

"They changed our river to look like a drain so people stopped thinking of it as a river," said Jagedeswari Marriappan, who runs the River Care Programme at the Global Environment Centre, a Malaysian NGO.

"People don't see the rubbish because the river washes it away. It's an attitude and a lack of enforcement."

Kampung Warisan, beneath the world's largest quartz ridge and the dam that provides much of Kuala Lumpur's drinking water, marks the point at which the Klang River enters the city.

The river here is not much more than a stream, but for years was neglected and filthy.

Source : aljazeera.com More content on this topic is here

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Taxonomy

• Governance
• Catchment Management
• River Engineering