Director-general of DID (Drainage and Irrigation Department) Keizrul said we should blame the rapid growth and poor town planning as the cause of the recent flood situation in Kuala Lumpur.So, it's blame town-planning department of City Hall?
But DID was one of the authority in which their approval must be sought before any projects or housing development would be approved. At such, didn't DID play an important role to see that all drainage system planned had been effective and efficient before they put their signatures as one of the town planning approval body?
The fact remains is that, throughout Malaysia, town planning system in the city and towns are ad hoc and lacks a long-term foresight-based systematic integrated plan based on future needs and requirements with a thorough analysis of the projections of growth and defragmentations arising from social evolutions and commercial gatherings. The planning authorities would just approved projects based on the submissions that had fulfilled the standards and procedures as stated in the guidebook (and contributions where necessary, written and codified, or by mutual understanding requirements). However, the authorities such as DID, JKR and City Hall do not have an integrated town planning system which will include the projections and analysis of the system adequacy and integrity over the next 20 years.
I was doing a research at PJS and Subang jaya and wasn't surprise to me that in an area near to Sunway-Leisure Complex, they had now built another 4-blocks of service apartments which was next to another 4-blocks of office complex called Bali Building (previously built by Sunway Bhd). There, the road side drains is 12inches and the culverts are 24inches diameter. So, you would understand the capacity of the drains and culverts that was to cater for 8-blocks of highrise buildings and not considering the fact that there are upstream residence and shops, and the need to evaluate the system channels that will be transporting the water from the upstream down to the monsoon-drain at Federal Highway. So, when it rains, the whole road will be flooded. Note that all these development were approved by the local city council in conjunction with the approval of the other 8-authorities such as DID, JKR, Bomba, Kementerian, etc.
Do we have a solution to the problem? Will the SMART Tunnel be smart enough to collect the liquid if the liquid would not be able to discharge themselves through the inadequate and under-capacity drainage system which is fully clogged and blocked?
11 comments:
Doc, IMHO, the 1969 riots has destroy 50% of the country functionality. Without municipal councils election, no civil servant are deem accountability of ANY project failure and bad town planning.
And for SMART, there is too little information about how the water discharge. The worrisome part are the people stay at the downstream.
In addition, SMART design are prone to have great risk of trapping motorist inside the tunnel when traffic jam. I bet those joker haven't implement buffer area and timing to evacuate all the car from the tunnel. For example car inside SMART tunnel location should never exceed 50.
Agree with the upstream water management. However, I doubt those "interested parties" will care about it since solving it will make incumbent politikus lost the opportunity to make "trouble money".
Pass the buck , pushing the blame, pointing finger, blaming God.............this is the culture we have in government departments/ministries from the prime minister to the office boys in Malaysia.
I wonder why the Minister of Works didn't come up with a masterplan to elevate all major roads in KL - that'll provide enough jobs and opportunities to get rich quick ahead of the next GE.
Masterplans on planning for KL? So many impressive prints have been written and created but like comic magazines, read and laugh at and finally rotting away at some corner, befitting feed for cockroaches and termites. Over decades, local officials have attened dozens of forums and seminars both locally and overseas on local governance and city planning, outwardly impressive and theoretical. But tragically, the bottomline: back to square one with disastrous results.
Even the poor plastic bags get blamed for the flash floods. Garbage they said. Or is it truly two-legged garbage at fault? Any lawyers want to defend the plastic entity from defamation?
Madmonk
I wonder on the effectiveness of the SMART tunnel??? Let's see!!!
Town planning in Kuala Lumpur?
Er...planning a town on mud (Lumpur) is insane to begin with.
Better to just pack up and go lar.
Even the PM cabut to Putrajaya.
Though, I'm still to see the jaya part happening.
M_oot,
The SMART Tunnel design did take into consideration of the risk factors and the escape timing. However, the main concerned is the fact that the operators may not be equipped with the knowledge of the design and crisis management. Then when the risks event takes place, disaster management becomes faulty and possibly causes great anxieties. That's my main worry.
AM,
The management of the SMART Tunnel is locked between DID and JKR and you can understand the anxiety when the risk event takes place...the blame game would continue.
Blame it on approval to implement projects without secure proper controls over soil erosion and disposal of waste materials. Blame it on the lack of proper controls and inspection without effective action (semua boleh kau tim).
Doc
You are right about the crisis management part. For these people, management of a crisis appears to start the day after a crisis has happened.
So how do you manage a flood crisis? At best, talking to the press defensively about installing flood alarms, about evacuation when waters rise, etc. At worst, it's about clearing the drains after the floods, about quickly washing the roads so that people can walk there again...
How pathetic! Retention ponds are never completed and implemented on time. And when they are, they are never adequate.
It's not just in KL. Look at Shah Alam after the authorities have spent our hard earned money on flood gates. The floods are still there. But at least there are some happy councillors and contractors!
Bayi,
Even if the design is sufficient, our maintenance culture is still the cause of concern. Retention pond can't meet crisis or disaster situation. But the most imminent problem are still the under-capacity drains, clogged and chocked, and the transfer channels such as the culverts and box drains and monsoon drains.
We need another disaster and crisis to learn something. The failure is a lack of strategic plan.
Most drainage planning in this country consists of just hooking up the drains and piping from the new project into existing drainage.
Even very large construction projects are simply connected up to the existing system. There's very little systems analysis of the drainage over the entire area.
So its no surprise heavy rains will quickly swamp the drains.
Having said that, civic consciousness is important. I've seen roads flooded to levels which can stall cars simply because the outlets have been blocked by plastic bags. When the bags were removed, the water quickly subsided. 3rd World mentality !
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