DAPs M Manogaran says it is an open secret that the land office and the Municipal Council are corrupt.

PETALING JAYA: DAP member M Manogaran has fingered the Land Office and Municipal Council in Cameron Highlands for being corrupt and allowing the horrific mud floods to occur last week in which five people were killed and hundreds evacuated.

In a statement, Manogaran said, It is open knowledge that the land office and the Majlis are corrupt.

Illegal land clearing is rampant. Uncontrolled land clearing is permitted under the guise of development.

He also attacked Pahang Menteri Besar Adnan Yaakob for merely playing the blame game by saying residents dumping trash into the river resulted in waters bursting its banks during heavy rainfall.

This is an attempt to sweep the problem under the carpet. The problem is more than that. The real culprit is the land office and the local authority.

He also had some harsh words for current MP of Cameron Highlands, G. Palanivel who he said was simply engaging in fire fighting while the previous MP should have seen these tragedies coming Cameron Highlands way but did not see it.

Saying Cameron Highlands was facing such serious threats, Manogaran pointed out that approximately 30 landslides had occurred from Tapah all the way to the top.

He also lamented that the authorities had not even bothered to close the roads until today.

He added, It is not the rain (that caused the landslides) but clearing and disturbances to the hills which are not done properly and without expert advice.

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Mud floods: The real culprit is corruption

KUALA LUMPUR: The continuous land clearing activities in Cameron Highlands will probably cause the area to face bigger floods and landslides in the future, according to a geology expert.

Lecturer in Geology of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) Assoc Prof Dr Tajul Anuar Jamaluddin said the greediness of settlers in clearing hilly areas to be turned into new vegetable farms would also cause soil degradation that could lead to landslides.

During heavy rains, the soil in the cleared hilly areas can erode and the existing dam is no longer capable of containing large quantity of water, and this situation will cause major floods, he told Bernama in response to the muddy floods in Cameron Highlands last Wednesday.

He said the soil in Cameron Highlands was no longer suitable for agricultural activities after the highland fell victim to uncontrolled land clearing activity.

They (settlers) cleared the land to open new vegetable farms because the existing land is no longer fertile due to the excessive use of chemical fertilisers.

This was done for profit, without even taking into consideration the risks of muddy floods and landslides that await the villagers, he said.

As such, Tajul Anuar called on the settlers to optimise the use of existing land by using organic fertilisers and good bacteria technology to re-fertilise the land.

He also called on the authority to take immediate action to stop land clearing activity and to close all illegal agriculture areas, which were mostly developed by foreign settlers.

Cameron Highlands is a national tourism icon noted for its beautiful landscape and cool weather. If the authorities do not do something about the land clearing activity, Cameron Highlands will slowly lose its visitors and eventually, its identity, he said.

In the 6.30pm incident last Wednesday, five people were killed, while five others were injured after their villages were hit by major floods when the water at the Sultan Abu Bakar Dam had to be released in stages following heavy downpours.

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PETALING JAYA, Malaysia - Greenhouse farming, encroachment on river reserves and land clearing are among the activities that caused the floods and mudslide at several areas in Cameron Highlands, an enviromental group said.

Regional Environmental Awareness Cameron Highlands (Reach) president R. Ramakrishnan said the filters used by greenhouse farmers on their crops caused an unnatural flow of water into the river bed.

"They use plastic to cover and protect the crops and the water flowing from it goes into the riverbed.

"When the river cannot accommodate the extra water, there will be flash floods," Ramakrishnan told The Star.

The Star had previously highlighted in a series of articles the massive land clearing and development in Cameron Highlands.

Ramakrishnan also said there was no longer land available for agricultural purposes as the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-Based Industry had ruled that such land was only suitable in areas with gradients below 20 degrees.

He estimated that the current erosion rate in the area was about 200 tonnes per hectare per year.

Tanah Rata assemblyman Leong Ngah Ngah cited over development, land clearing and heavy rainfall among the factors for the incident.

He said there have been a lot of development over the past years.

"Unchecked land clearing also cause destruction to water retention areas, causing rivers to swell.

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Reach: Floods and mudslide caused by several factors

News Desk

The Star

Publication Date : 07-11-2014

Greenhouse farming, encroachment on river reserves and land clearing are among the activities that caused the floods and mudslide at several areas in Cameron Highlands, an enviromental group said.

Regional Environmental Awareness Cameron Highlands (Reach) president R. Ramakrishnan said the filters used by greenhouse farmers on their crops caused an unnatural flow of water into the river bed.

They use plastic to cover and protect the crops and the water flowing from it goes into the riverbed.

When the river cannot accommodate the extra water, there will be flash floods, Ramakrishnan told The Star.

The Star had previously highlighted in a series of articles the massive land clearing and development in Cameron Highlands.

Ramakrishnan also said there was no longer land available for agricultural purposes as the Ministry of Agriculture and Agro-Based Industry had ruled that such land was only suitable in areas with gradients below 20 degrees.

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Floods and mudslide in M'sia caused by several factors, says expert

November 7, 2014

Teresa Kok says menteri besar admitted to being aware of stripped forests yet did nothing about it.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Pahang state government has indirectly admitted it failed to prevent excessive land-clearing in Cameron Highlands which resulted in the tragic mud floods in Ringlet, DAP vice-chairman Teresa Kok said today.

Kok said Pahang Menteri Besar Adnan Yaakob had acknowledged the fact that excessive land-clearing resulted in the mud flow but still did not take any action.

Adnan had said he had surveyed Cameron Highlands many times by air and noticed that the forests had been stripped bare due to excessive land-clearing, whether done legally or illegally.

He also admitted that the state government had done nothing to check the situation for fear that the people would immediately attack and blame the government for being uncaring.

Kok said Adnans remarks were merely to divert attention that the state government had failed in its responsibility to prevent excessive land-clearing.

She said Adnan was also admitting that the government had failed to carry out enforcement.

Does he think that he can convince the public that due to the governments fear of being criticised, the state government has refrained from doing what it should do? she asked.

Kok said the occurrence of mud flows would prevent tourists from visiting Cameron Highlands, which was one of the most popular tourists spots in Malaysia.

Original post:
Pahang govt indirectly admits to causing mud flood

Translated by DOMINIC LOH Sin Chew Daily

PETALING JAYA, Nov 6 (Sin Chew Daily) -- After almost a year, the mudslide occurred in Cameron Highlands again. The two tragic incidents nevertheless have many things in common, and we cannot help to speculate whether what happened were actually man-induced disasters instead of natural disasters.

Senior Meteorological Officer of the National Weather Centre, Dr Mohd Hisham Mohd Anip told Sin Chew Daily today the rainfall at Cameron Highlands yesterday was 80mm lasting for over four hours. However he said the rainfall was considered normal for the monsoon season and should not have caused the mudslide.

He also rebuked talks of natural disaster, saying the mudslide yesterday had something to do with the high water level at Sultan Abu Bakar Dam.

Two days earlier, TNB generation division senior general manager (asset management) Azman Talib warned that a mudslide could occur in Cameron Highlands any time.

Recurrence in one year

Early last October, the most severe mud flood in history took place in Cameron Highlands, and the incident recurred barely a year later. This time, the site of disaster was near Ringlet new village, about 4km from last year's disaster zone.

Last year, the rain fell for seven hours but the rain only lasted for four hours this year.

Azman said two days before the mudslide that the Ringlet Lake adjoining Sultan Abu Bakar Dam was filled with garbage that had piled up to almost two storeys high that could fill at least 100 football stadia!

He said the domestic and agricultural wastes disposed by local residents were ten times more than before, up from 30,000 cubic meters in 1960 to 300,000 cubic meters today, adding that this had made the garbage clearing work much more complicated and costly.

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Indiscreet dumping, land clearing the culprits

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New York (CNN) -- A U.N. official has a message for those worried about chemical weapons in Syria: A plan is in motion to do something about them.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is in the capital of Damascus this week to sort out the plan for the destruction of 12 facilities used to make chemical weapons, Sigrid Kaag said Wednesday.

Kaag, the special adviser overseeing the destruction of Syria's chemical stockpiles, addressed the Security Council on Wednesday, according to Gary Quinlan, the Australian ambassador to the United Nations and head of the council.

He relayed that plans to destroy seven hangers and five underground tunnels are to start later this month and are to be completed in the summer of 2015,

The OPCW team is also in consultations to draw up plans for the destruction of chemical weapons facilities that were previously not disclosed by the Syrian government, including a ricin production facility, Quinlan said.

In October, Kaag informed the Security Council that there were four chemical weapons sites previously undisclosed, including one production facility.

"There are additional sites that we've become aware of since the initial declaration of production facilities," Quinlan told reporters after the meeting. "So now the question is: sorting out, in Damascus, precisely what is done with those.

"As I said, there's an OPCW team in Damascus right now which is looking at a range of these sorts of issues."

Quinlan made clear that all disclosed chemical weapons had been removed from the country and 98% of the declared chemical materials, which amounts to more than 1,300 tons, had been destroyed.

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Clearing Syria of chemcial weapons?

Land clearing completed

By: Louis Palacios

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Land clearing completed - Video

Published: Monday, November 3, 2014 at 5:08 p.m. Last Modified: Monday, November 3, 2014 at 5:08 p.m.

Fracking, the drilling technique thats driven a boom in land-based shale gas production, has sparked environmental concerns and public outcry, from Pennsylvania to the Louisiana coast.

But fracking is also expanding offshore, in the Gulf of Mexico, with hardly anyone noticing.

A year after California imposed new regulations requiring oil and gas companies to notify state regulators and the public whenever they perform hydraulic fracturing, environmental groups and policy experts are suddenly and belatedly learning about offshore fracking in the Gulf and expressing frustration with a lack of information from regulators.

People dont know this is happening, said Jonathan Henderson of the environmental advocacy group Gulf Restoration Network. Nobody I talk to has any idea, much less the process thats used to get at those reserves.

Theres very little public information on the practice, and to date, we just simply dont know a great deal about where and when its taking place, said Jayni Hein, policy director at New York Universitys Institute for Policy Integrity.

Fracking refers to the shooting of chemicals, water and sand into the bottom of a well to stimulate the flow of oil and gas from the surrounding formation, so it can be sucked up more quickly and easily. The process has been around for about 70 years on land and in commercial use offshore for about 20 years.

The most common type of fracking offshore is less about breaking up bedrock as is the practice on land and more about clearing out sand and mud that can gum up the path of precious hydrocarbons. Tools are used deep in the well to shoot gravel or pellets, along with seawater, acid and other chemicals to break up and filter out impediments.

Industry representatives and others who have studied fracking closely say environmentalists are blowing the dangers both on land and offshore out of proportion. They say the process is very well understood by those who have been doing it for decades.

There are questions, however, about how well the procedures are being tracked by regulators.

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Offshore fracking raises questions