In my previous article in Twentytwo13, I posed several due diligence questions about allowing industrial hazards to traverse public and residential spaces — and whether conscious, quantitatively informed urban planning was practised.
Without expecting clear answers anytime soon on what environmental impact assessments (EIAs) or technical safety studies were done at key decision points, let’s explore how existing laws and regulations could be better exercised to ensure public safety.
The EIA process allows project proponents to assure regulators that environmental impacts are properly assessed and mitigated. But “environmental impact” goes far beyond wastewater and emissions. This concept, introduced through the 1985 amendment of the Environmental Quality Act 1974, has evolved.
Following gazettements in 1987 and 2015, and nearly four decades of practice, social impact assessment (SIA) and health impact assessment (HIA) are now components of the EIA. These are reviewed by the Department of Environment before approval, usually with conditions attached.
EIAs also affect town planning, thanks to the National Physical Planning Council formed via a 2001 amendment of the Town and Country Planning Act 1976. Local authorities cannot issue planning permission for prescribed activities unless the EIA has been approved by the Department of Environment, a federal agency.
But what about major fire, explosion, or toxic release hazards — had the pipeline, for instance, carried a poisonous gas? How should such risks be reflected in local plan buffer zones? In disaster response coordination between agencies?
In a recent podcast interview, an expert highlighted the importance of Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA), supported by computer modelling of fire and blast consequences, as a tool in gas pipeline design and safety.
To my knowledge, a QRA has never been formally incorporated into, or approved within an EIA report.
Outside the EIA framework, QRAs have been done in Malaysia for over 30 years for major hazard installations under the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994.
The Control of Industrial Major Accident Hazards Regulations 1996 requires that the safety of workers and the offsite population be assured through a framework covering risk-based design, safe operating procedures, and emergency preparedness.
QRAs inform nearly every part of this multilayered safeguard system — and Petronas’ gas processing plants were among the pioneers of this in the 1990s, under oversight by the Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH).
Granted, the Act and Regulations did not exist — and QRA was not yet a known methodology in Malaysia — when the gas pipeline was laid through the oil palm estates earmarked for housing. But that’s beside the point.
A pipeline corridor on state land is not a factory or workplace. Regardless, residents living along pipeline routes deserve the same rigour in safety measures as those living near industrial hazard installations.
That can only happen if QRA is formally adopted into EIA reports — and becomes part of the documentation considered in town planning decisions. In other words, QRA needs legal force beyond the narrow confines of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.
As I asked in my earlier column — was an EIA done by Petronas and/or Sime Darby Property (the housing developer), and were fire and explosion risks to residents considered — regardless of whether QRA was a thing at the time?
If not, should QRAs now be done for all pipeline corridors under the Peninsular Gas Utilisation (PGU) project and other transmission networks running through populated areas — to ensure homes fall within “As Low As Reasonably Practicable” risk zones?
Beyond Putra Heights, the EIA and QRA communities — environmentalists, scientists and engineers — must speak up for reforms that serve the public interest. Fear for one’s safety, or of property values plunging, are also negative social impacts.
SIA still lacks the codified threshold criteria that EIAs have, and its application often seems driven more by “national economic interest” than actual risks to people.
The SIA community is mainly made up of town planners. Whatever reforms are initiated within the broader EIA regulatory umbrella, town planners must translate these into structure/local plans and planning guidelines.
Public education will be key. This begins with understanding the essential utilities that sustain modern life — their inherent hazards, and why they must run through inhabited areas.
As I see it, closing regulatory gaps and building a more coherent oversight structure for transporting hazardous materials by pipeline doesn’t require new laws.
It just needs a Madani government committed to doing its best for the safety and wellbeing of the rakyat.
The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of Twentytwo13.
Main image: Sadiq Asyraf / Prime Minister’s Office
