Waste Disposal at Fish Farms

Ms Faizah Jamal asked the Minister for National Development (a) what is the frequency of AVA's routine inspections to monitor fish farms including night raids; and (b) whether these cover the southern and western coastal fish farms.

Ms Faizah Jamal asked the Minister for National Development what are the steps that NEA takes to audit trash disposal by offshore fish farms to ensure that our water quality is not affected.

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Mdm Speaker, under the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority's fish farm licensing conditions, owners of offshore fish farms must properly dispose of the waste generated from their farms. The owners must also keep their premises in good condition and ensure that the waters in and around their farms are clean and pollution-free at all times.

AVA carries out quarterly inspections and ad hoc night raids on all fish farms, including those in the southern and western coastal areas, to check for compliance with its licensing conditions. During the inspections, AVA officers will check that farmers use proper waste disposal methods. In addition, night raids deter farmers from illegally towing fish farm trash to the shore under the cover of darkness.

In October 2013, AVA explored if door-to-door waste collection services could be provided for fish farm sited in the eastern Johor Straits. There were 60 licensed eastern fish farms at that time.

AVA estimated that each fish farmer would have to pay $160 per month for weekly door-to-door waste collection service. With the new AVA jetty at Lorong Halus ready later this year, the eastern fish farmers can bring their farm waste to the waste collection centre at the jetty to help facilitate proper waste disposal. This is similar to the arrangement for the western fish farmers who use the waste disposal services at the Lim Chu Kang jetty.

I have a few supplementary questions. These questions were actually filed before the recent incident of fish deaths. So, I think the questions are even more important at this stage for us to consider.

My first supplementary question is this: there has been mention that the owners have to dispose of the fish trash correctly. However, immediately after the Parliamentary Question (PQ) response that I received in November, I checked at Changi Creek and I found there were no skids there at all. Up until only when the fish deaths happened that a skid was actually provided. And even then, it disappeared yesterday – it is no longer there. So, my question is: how

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was the fish trash disposed of previously from the eastern shores and what happened to the disposal now with the fish deaths? That is the first question.

And secondly, with the fish deaths happening at the moment, what is AVA going to do about the monitoring of the water quality? Given the fact that the reason given for the fish deaths was a plankton bloom, does it mean that AVA had not been monitoring water quality and given feedback? And if so, what is going to be the solution going forward?

Next question: is AVA going to be studying what the health impact is on us as a result of a possibly bad water quality as a result of this incident?

And lastly, would AVA now consider going forward again and helping fish farms to use more technologically advanced and environmentally friendly methods of fish farming in the future?

I thank Ms Faizah for the set of questions. On the skid at Changi Creek, we will ask AVA to investigate on what happened. If the Member's observation is right, we have to find out exactly who is responsible for that.

On the recent issue of what happened at the fish farms, the plankton bloom: the conditions happened over the last couple of weeks facilitated a plankton bloom because there is heat as well as the tide. Because of the low tide, we were told that facilitated the flourishing and the blooming of the plankton.

AVA is monitoring such a condition. But when it happened, it was very fast. It also linked up to the type of fish that the farmers were actually rearing. There were three types of fish that were susceptible to such conditions and these were the ones which were not able to survive. I think there was a multitude of factors that led to that condition.

On the issue of the quality of the water: the way the fish were disposed of during the recent fish deaths, AVA brought in their contractors to help the affected fish farmers. Under the normal situation, the fish farmers are responsible to dispose of the fish waste – that is their responsibility. We have two locations: western and southern, and the eastern.

The western and southern section, they have the Lim Chu Kang jetty that has facilitated a more controlled fish waste disposal system. They dispose of their waste at the jetty and there is a central disposal system available there. At

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the eastern farms, we do not have that system at this point in time. That is one of the reasons why we are building the Lorong Halus jetty to facilitate similar processes. Once we have the Lorong Halus jetty, then the farmers can dispose of their waste centrally at the Lorong Halus jetty. The jetty will be ready by this quarter and will be operational probably by the later part of the year.

On the issue of the health impact, we are studying the health impact and the conditions of the water; we are monitoring very closely.

On the last question on technological advancement: that is really one of the things we found when I visited the farms recently. We have put in place opportunities for the farmers to improve their conditions. One of the challenges they had was that they had very poor aeration system. Some did not even have generators to facilitate aeration as an immediate action when the oxygen level of the water came down. The oxygen level came down because of the plankton blooms.

We are working very closely with the farmers to help them improve on their current systems. One of the challenges that we acknowledge – and I think the farmers acknowledge it as well – is we want to turn this situation from adversity to opportunity, and see how we can actually facilitate them in improving their systems such that future occurrences may be prevented.

There are farmers who have successfully tapped on the Food Fund and they have put in better systems that had allowed them to mitigate the impact of the current situation. So some of the farms were not affected because they have invested in proper technology and proper systems that allowed them to mitigate the impact of such sudden changes in the temperature and sudden changes in conditions. Their aeration systems were a lot more advanced. They were able to manage the oxygen levels within their farms.

A supplementary question, Mdm Speaker. Would AVA then consider revoking the licences of those farmers that have not been up-to-date or have not been keeping to the promises that they made to AVA?

When we revoked their licences recently, there were a lot of pleas from the fish farmers. We want to try to help the fish farmers. The first thing is to help them develop their systems as well as to be able to produce. Certainly, there are targets that have been set in place because we have very limited spaces. We have limited water and land spaces for farming activities. With the farmers, we have put in place opportunities for

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them to improve other productivity levels.

Yes, in a worst case scenario, we will revoke licences for those who have failed to comply with the regulations we put in place, including those who fail to produce the kind of quantity that is required. The way to go right now is to help them. We want to help the farmers because this is their livelihood. We want to try to be sympathetic even for those who have recently suffered the mass fish deaths. AVA is working very closely with them, trying to facilitate and, possibly, help them with the purchase of fish fries, fingerlings, put in greater subsidies to help them get back on their feet. We want to try to help our local farmers. We also have targets where we want to improve the productivity level of our fish production because fish is one of the key food items in our food strategy.

So, as much as we want to try to make them comply, we will take a very calibrated approach to support them. For those who have failed over several years and they have not been taking part in productivity movements, certainly we will look at the worst case scenario of revoking their licences.