ENERGY, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change Minister Yeo Bee Yin will head to Australia to discuss Lynas Corp’s handling of waste at its Gebeng plant with her counterpart, a senior ministry official said today.

Ministry deputy secretary-general Dr K. Nagulendran said Yeo will raise how best to manage the waste from the rare earth processing plant, following the government’s decision to allow Lynas to continue its operations here.

“They are going to talk about how we can best manage the waste water that’s coming out from the Gebeng plant.

“We hope that the meeting will take place soon,” he said after the Green Tech function at Bandar Baru Bangi today. 

Nagulendran was commenting on Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s announcement yesterday that the Australian rare earths producer will be allowed to continue operations at its processing plant. 

Its operating licence is up for renewal in September, but uncertainty had clouded its fate due to disagreement over Malaysia’s insistence that Lynas remove and ship back the waste to Australia.

Yesterday, Dr Mahathir said Putrajaya intends to renew the plant’s licence as it involved a large investment. 

“Dr Mahathir had said the plant will stay. For us at the ministry, we are only concerned about environmental issues. So we need to discuss these with the government.”

Yeo, in an interview with 8TV’s Global Watch programme last night, had also said that the cabinet at its last meeting on Wednesday agreed for her to meet Australian government officials on Lynas’ waste disposal issues.

In Australia, both state and federal ministers can issue permits to allow the shipping of waste back to the country.

Asked about groundwater contamination at the Lynas plant site, Nagulendran said there was none except for a one-off incident detected in readings.

“There was a peak (in contamination readings) but it was a one-off thing. We have checked whether it’s from Lynas and it’s not.

“They also check and we verified it. But after that it went back to normal so it could be a certain spike that happens when there’s disturbance to land use,” he said.

He said contamination monitoring at the site showed that levels were below what was permitted in the Environmental Quality Act. – May 31, 2019.