Teresa Kok

Bird view of Bukit Tagar landfill site. This is the site where rubbish and waste from Klang Valley being burried by the earth.
A closer look at the Bukit Tagar Sanitary Landfill from the helicopter
Deputy Minister Sothinathan (3rd from left), YB Dr James Dawos (MP for Mambong, 4th from left) and me were being briefed by personnels from KUB-Berjaya-Environ at the landfill site.
Leachate treatment plant, it is same facility used by Indah Water Consortium
Water from Leachate treatment plant will flow to this “Seed Bed”, the long roots grass will absorb nutrients of the leachate and thus cleanse the water.

Yesterday, I have an interesting trip to Bukit Tagar Sanitary Landfill together with Deputy Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Sothinathan and YB Dr James Dawos (MP for Mambong). We travelled there by helicopter. We were accompanied by the Director General of DOE Datuk Rosnani

It was my first time I travelled with helicopter. We took the helicopter at the Old Airport at Sungai Besi. You know, we always passed by the old airport at Sungai Besi, but we never know how to get there. So, last night, I purposely ask my member to drive me to locate the entrance of the old airport and we found it along the road to the Kwang Tong cemetary.
I felt giddy when the helicopter took off and during landing and whenever the helicopter turned around in the air. It is actually dangerous to travel by helicopter compare to aeroplane, especially when there is strong wind. When we came back after the visit, the helicopter went against strong wind and it was a bit unsteady. I then realised the danger of travelling by helicopter and the reason why so many helicopters felled in Sarawak .

The Bukit Tagar Sanitary Landfill is being described by the the DG of DOE as state-of-art technology as the operator KUB-Berjaya-Enviro of the landfill used modern technology to bury rubbish and treat the leachate. We were given a briefing by the consultant of the company and were brought to the site to see the actual operation of the treatment of leachate.

The cycle started by rubbish and household waste being buried at the landfill site, there was a pipe underneath that will channel the leachate to a pond at the lower land. The leachate that collected by this pond will then be directed to a treatment plant, the treatment plant is a bit like the facilities used to treat the sewerage waste by Indah Water Consortium. The leachate water was then channeled to “seed bed” which was planted by long root weeds, to let the weeds to absorb the nutrients from the leachate, the leachate was then channeled to another pond, and the water was then used for irrigation for the plants in the surrounding area.

I raised the question on what happened on 26 February where news report said that leachate from the landfill flew into the Selangor River and contaminated drinking water for Klang Valley. I was told by them that the news report was not very accurate but they admitted that an accident had happened where the pipe that channeled leachate from rubbish dump to the cleansing plant has broken till leachate flowed into a small stream nearby and subsequently flowed into Selangor River, but they also claimed that the leachate would take about 4 hours to flow into Selangor River, so the amount of ammonia could not be that high as claimed by Syabas. They suspected other factors could have aggravated the contamination of the river.

As a whole, the Bukit Tagar Sanitary Landfill is very impressive but such waste treatment facility is very costly. If the government were to close down all open landfill sites now, then government has to set up more sanitary landfills, this also means that our rubbish collection cost will certainly going to increase in future.