KOTA KINABALU : The Sabah Environmental Protection Association (Sepa) said it will resort to legal action if the Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment ( DEIA) report on the proposed 300MW Sinakut coal-fired power plant is approved by the Department of Environment.
“If the Department of Environment approves the DEIA without consideration and though a process not acceptable to Sabahans, it leaves us with no choice. Sepa will take the issue to court,” said Sepa President Wong Tack.
“We have consulted our legal team and many concerned Sabahans have pledged financial support for it. We are firm that any irresponsible action by the project proponent and approval agencies will be met with the strongest action from the people of Lahad Datu and Sabah.
“We are not against anybody but only to protect crucial ecosystems like Darvel Bay which affects Sabah’s long-term interests and food security,” Wong Tack said.
“The social study in the DEIA also does not reflect the mood of the people in the immediate and larger area of Lahad Datu,” Wong Tack said.
“Ground activities over the last month recorded 500 people had turned up on the proposed project site in Sinakut, 100km from town and a further unexpected 1,500 people turned up at an anti-coal forum on July 24 in Lahad Datu,” he noted.
“We can see a groundswell of opposition against the coal-fired power plant because nobody in the East Coast or Sabah want the best source of seafood at their backyard to be turned into a garbage dump for independent power provider, Lahad Datu Energy.
“The mood on the round is very clear and we hope that the Government reads that message and takes it seriously,” Wong Tack said.
Nonetheless, he said Sepa welcomed Chief Minister Datuk Musa Aman’s appointment of Datuk Masidi Manjun, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment to look into the matter.
“We are thankful to the Chief Minister for having looked at the people’s concern seriously and appointing the rightful State Ministry under Masidi to look at the matter,” Wong Tack said in a statement, Sunday.
“That alone has restored the State’s dignity for the people of Sabah and State agencies,”he added.
“We are also very grateful to Masidi for his press statement Friday that the decision and the responsibility is in the hands of the State Government and the State Cabinet.
“This is the right thing to do and we are quite confident, now, with Masidi’s leadership, a positive decision will be made with Sabah’s long-term interest at heart,” Wong Tack said.
On the basis of Sepa’s outright rejection of the DEIA, Wong Tack claimed that firstly, Sabah’s members of the Panel of Review of which Sepa was one, had rejected the Terms of Reference (TOR) at a meeting held in Putrajaya last November.
The objection was due to crucial parameters which were very pertinent to the proposed site such as the Sulu Sulawesi Marine Eco-region and the Coral Triangle Initiatives which had already identified Darvel-Semporna Bay as a Priority Conservation Area for years, were left out of the TOR.
“During that meeting it was advised that the consultants work with or consult State agencies, NGOs and the people of Sabah but none of that happened,” he claimed.
“Subsequent to that TOR meeting, the State Minister (Masidi) requested a second review of the Terms of Reference be held in Sabah but again nothing happened and yet the original Terms of Reference was approved and came back to us with hardly any amendment,” Wong Tack said.
“That means our opinions, our inputs and comments expressed during the TOR meeting were totally ignored.
“Because the original Terms of Reference was approved in a hasty manner and imposed on us, Sepa attended the July 27 DEIA review at Kedah Room, Federal Building, Kota Kinabalu, under protest, making it clear at outset that we rejected the DEIA on grounds that it didn’t follow due process required of a detailed EIA.
“So the stand that we now go public with is not new. Every member of the Panel of Review heard it, including the consultants and project proponents,” Wong Tack Said.
“And during the DEIA Review meeting State agencies questioned why clean and green technology options were totally left out in the study but the consultants’ reply was their scope was limited to coal,” he said.
“Because they seem insistent on looking at only a narrow limit and not any other options while Green Surf of which Sepa is a member knew there are feasible renewable alternatives from our study done by a US energy expert which report has been made public.
Hence we have good reasons for rejecting the Terms of Reference and the DEIA,” he said.
“Our fellow NGOs had exposed false and blatant non-factual information in the DEIA report. SEPA’s stand now is that the consultants involved should be dropped,” Wong Tack said.
“We hope Masidi will engage local consultants to do a detailed study but Sepa’s opinion is that over the last eight years, under the well publicised Sulu Sulawesi Marine Eco-region and Coral Triangle Initiative of which Malaysia is a signatory, there is enough scientific information there to decide that this coal-fired power project in Darvel Bay should be scrapped, right now,” he said.
“Both Malaysian and international marine scientists have spent years looking at this area and pushing for marine conservation under this Coral Triangle Initiative where 15 million people in the SSME and 35 million in the Coral Triangle depend on for their livelihood.
“There is enough information about the ecological importance of Darvel Bay and no further study is necessary.”
Daily Express 2nd Aug 2010 .
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