EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT FROM DAVID FOO

In response to my posts below, Section 12, Petaling Jaya residents and environmental activist David Foo provides an eye-witness account of water on roads in the Bangsar area of Kuala Lumpur, about two kilometres from the border with Petaling Jaya.

Last Saturday evening - about 6.30pm - I took the internal roads of Bangsar to get from Jalan Riong to Jalan Pantai Baru. It was pouring cats and dogs then, and I witnessed an amazing sight - waterfalls along the roads like Jalan Riong, Jalan Tanduk, Jalan Kurau, Jalan Bilis and Jalan Tempinis Kanan. Water was springing out of drains like up-side-down waterfalls. Evidently, the drainage is not competent to handle such voluminous downpours - having been designed more than half a century ago, long before massive developments sprung up in the upper reaches of the neighbourhood.

MBPJ's (Petaling Jaya City Council's) crowning glory - that retention or detention pond between Jalan 12/12 and 12/14, fills up like your beer glass being filled up with supply from a fire hose reel. At this point in time, a lot more planned and approved concrete which will augment the surface run off feeding this pseudo-reservoir, is yet to be mixed and poured. Houses on Jalan 12/14, more than 3 meters above the brim of this water channel, are still flooding.

This highlights MBPJ's typical sight on the big picture frame. They splash paint on it with idea of what image will form and fail to look at the pixels which form the lines. Yes, they have monstrous drains and littler ones to feed them, but, hey, the gullets of the minor siblings are choked and remain choked. And so we see water regurgitating like a food poisoning victim puking.

sigh... perhaps I could do a much better job than those paid jesters. No, not perhaps. I am confident.

And

Jalan Duta is the SIN of monorail works, while the area surrounding Universiti Malaya's KL gate is possibly fed by Bangsar South and the newbies of original Bangsar.

"Monorail" or Mass Rapid Transit?

Anyway, a large, concrete lined storm retention drain runs behind David's home in Section 12 Petaling Jaya and he has been hammering away at the Petaling Jaya City Council that they should have made it a swale, instead of an all concrete lined storm retention drain.

What's a swale?

Well below is an example of a swale running behind the row of houses on Jalan 14/15, Section 14, Petaling Jaya.

Basically, a swale has a concrete drain at the bottom which carries the normal volume of drain water most of the time but when the water level is especially high, it overflows the concrete drain and the water seeps into the grass covered earth on either side. The idea of such storm drains is to slow the flow of water into the river so as to prevent flash floods.

Besides being more pleasing to the eye, the grass covered earth also does not retain heat, unlike concrete and if they planted some trees along the grassy part, it would not only be even more pleasing to the eye but would also help stabilise the soil and help reduce the heat. 



The rain just got heavier again.

Well, let's see what the traffic will be like on the main roads tomorrow (Friday 13 May 2016) morning.

Hmmm! Friday the 13th.

Charles F. Moreira