Better Learn to Swim or Sail

It is quite sad when thousands of people have to be evacuated and millions lost in flood damage.

It is even more disturbing when we hear that officials have to wait for reports to try and explain the cause of the massive floods when many people have been protesting over the massive clearing of forest reserves.

The area that was flooded is not in Bangladesh, where millions have to live in flood prone areas. Floods are happening in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor,two of the most developed areas in Malaysia.

Perhaps our infrastructure experts have concentrated only on land clearing, housing construction and flyovers without considering important factors like proper drainage (that is not choked), greenery and river bank maintenance.

At one time, Environmental Impact Studies were only necessary when large areas were cleared so developers became smart and developed large tracts of land bit by bit to avoid the consultants’ fees for the EIA and the necessary approvals.

Looking at the map of the areas around Subang and Shah Alam, one will observe that there are two major rivers here, the Sungei Klang and the Sungei Langat.

It is therefore not surprising that Shah Alam could be a major flood plain but I understand that Geography is not taught in many schools nowadays.

There is a RM2 billion project for the SMART tunnel to alleviate flooding in Kuala Lumpur but one worries if the outlet from that tunnel 1s going to drown Shah Alam during the next major storm in the Klang Valley once it is operational.

Clearly what is required is for the Irrigation and Drainage authority to carry out a major reassessment of the drainage in the Klang Valley and make recommendations so that residents can once again experience flooding only once every 50 years or some acceptable yard-stick.

Definitely a flood once in three months does not qualify for a nation that hopes to achieve Vision 2020.
The Klang Yacht Club should find it easy to enroll new members and sell all those residents a small dinghy.

photo:http://octopus.gma.org/lobsters/boats/mainelobsterboat.gif