KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 3 — Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Federal Territories) Hannah Yeoh said today she plans to meet Selangor Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari to discuss developing more retention ponds outside Kuala Lumpur, as the capital has little land left for new flood mitigation projects.
Speaking during a panel session titled “Business vs Nature: Who Wins and When at the National Climate Governance Summit 2026”, Yeoh said greater cooperation between Kuala Lumpur and neighbouring Selangor was needed to strengthen the city’s flood resilience.
“The next step, really, is that we have to talk to other states. I’m trying to have a meeting with the menteri besar of Selangor. We need to create more retention ponds together with our neighbours.
“We have no land. Selangor has land, so let’s get this conversation together,” she said.
Yeoh said the shortage of available land in Kuala Lumpur had forced City Hall to adopt alternative approaches, including constructing underground retention ponds beneath public parks.
She said one such project was being built beneath Padang Merbok, while another beneath the Perdana Botanical Gardens had already helped reduce flooding in areas around Parliament.
“There is no more land to create more lakes. What do you do? So you go underneath the park,” she said.
Yeoh added that private developers had built more than 60 on-site retention ponds as part of development conditions imposed by Kuala Lumpur City Hall.
She said the government was also studying whether underground retention ponds should be given separate strata titles to protect them from future development.
“Now that I have space underneath, do I need a strata title? Just in case people start developing underground, and then even my retention pond is gone,” she said.
Separately, Yeoh said her ministry had established dedicated task forces to accelerate the gazettement of green spaces and retention ponds after discovering that many public areas in Kuala Lumpur had never been legally protected.
She cited a retention pond in the Kepong-Batu area, where portions of the land were gradually alienated over the years because it had never been gazetted, despite an earlier government decision to do so.
Yeoh said the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission had investigated the matter but found no wrongdoing because the retention pond had never been formally gazetted.
She said the green space task force was now working to gazette more than 400 parks and green spaces across Kuala Lumpur, while details of gazetted sites had been published online to improve public oversight.
Under a new policy, she said, no new approvals would be granted for commercial activities on gazetted green spaces, although existing operators would be given time to relocate where their temporary occupation licences remained valid.
“The most important thing is to gazette it first,” she said.
