Thursday, August 21, 2008

Malaysian Government Acts to Control Leachate Pollution

Leachate has been a highly charged subject in Malaysia over the past few years with escaping leachate getting into rivers and from there into water supplies and imparting a bad taste into drinking water in many thousands of homes. So now the Malaysian government is doing something about it. as in the snippet of news below.

Government to manage landfills to arrest pollution

SUNGKAI: The Government will take over management of the country’s 260 landfills in a move to reduce river pollution by leachate from the dumpsites.

Housing and Local Government Minister Datuk Seri Ong Ka Chuan said the takeover, expected by September, would be conducted under the Solid Waste and Public Cleansing Management Act 2007.

At present, he said, the management of landfills was not properly carried out and this led to pollution by leachate from dumpsites.

“The current practice is that the councils will dump all collected rubbish at landfills without separating them,” he said yesterday.

“This will lead to leachate, resulting in pollution to nearby rivers.”

Ong assured the people that the takeover of solid waste management would not result in higher assessment rates.

“Everything will still be the same,” he said, adding that the move would not affect the council’s bottom line. More...

We have designed two leachate plants in Malaysia to begin to tackle this problem. Watch the video of one of these on the leachate web site homepage.