The three-month moratorium on bauxite mining in Pahang may be extended if authorities could not meet the terms by its April 15 deadline. Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said he was satisfied with the progress of stockpiles clearing at the Kuantan Port, but will make another assessment at the end of March.
Rehabilitation
Pahang's bauxite mining areas can be rehabilitated within a relatively short period of two years if proper techniques are used to restore the land's soil and mineral structure, according to Malaysian Stormwater Organisation vice-president Datuk Ahmad Fuad Embi.
Asked to comment on reports that it would take many years to rehabilitate the bauxite mines in Pahang, Fuad, who was there to atted a forum, replied: "I believe the land can be restored in two years if it (remedial process) is done correctly. We have to try... if we don't try, we won't know."
The former deputy director-general of the Drainage and Irrigation Department said if the land concerned was left barren, any remaining loose soil would be subject to continuous erosion. "Do we want to leave 1,200ha of land looking like that? It will resemble a rocky desert because no plant will grow on it if the land is not rehabilitated... unless we want to wait for some 50 years for it to be naturally restored," he said.
Mining of bauxite, which is used in aluminium production, had surged in Pahang from mid-2014 due to high demand from China after Indonesia banned bauxite exports. Last year, there was a public outcry after the waters in the sea and some rivers in Kuantan turned red, apparently due to contamination by the mining activities. The government has imposed a three-month moratorium, beginning January 15 this year, during which all bauxite mining activities would be halted in Pahang.
Fuad said a vital aspect of the ex-mining land's rehabilitative process would be to reinstate the top soil which, most likely, would have been decimated when excavations were carried out to mine bauxite. Admitting that the rehabilitation process would be a tedious and costly affair, Fuad said the government should get the landowners and mining companies involved to foot the bill.
Fuad also stressed on the need for the government to introduce an erosion and sedimentation control plan in order to regulate the bauxite industry. Such a plan, he said, would entail bauxite-laden lorries to only travel on designated gravelled roads, as well as mineral stockpiles to be transferred to the loading port through conveyor belts.
Mining areas should also have buffer zones comprising trees or other types of vegetation, and sediment ponds to catch run-offs from the land, he added.
Meanwhile, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Faculty of Chemical Engineering lecturer Prof Dr Maketab Mohamad, who presented a working paper at the forum, said the bauxite mining sites would continue to pollute the surrounding areas as long as they remained barren. He said it was important to regularly test raw water samples from the areas located in the vicinity of the bauxite mines in order to analyse the heavy metal content.
United Nations University-International Institute for Global Health fellow researcher, Prof Dr Jamal Hisham Hashim, who also participated in the forum, said the three-month moratorium on bauxite mining was too short to make any difference to the areas that have been exposed to bauxite pollution for almost two years. He said the residents' health would also have to be taken into consideration as the bauxite mines were not situated in remote areas, with some even being located in the local people's backyards.
