The river is a highly dynamic environment and active ecosystem, human and industrial activity on its banks have an impact on it. Hence, continuous monitoring of industrial wastewater discharges is necessary to ensure environmentally sound waterways. Industries in Malaysia are increasing, and the number of polluted and slightly polluted rivers is also alarming. This brings up the main goal of this article, which is to describe the concept and categorisation considering the urgent need to improve Malaysia's river water quality and the industrial sectors role as a contributor to river pollution. The structure of this paper represents the argument on the essential issues of the field of study which is river pollution and compliance of industries with the focus area on Industrial Effluent Regulation 2009 (IER 2009) being observed. The purpose of this review is to provide better understanding to readers on the various concepts of rating parameters in measuring environmental compliances with industrial effluent discharges. The main idea in mind is to identify the themes in measuring compliances discussed in literatures and concludes with discussion on how the proposed compliance rating parameters should be selected with regards of research finding and documents review. The literature research identified four topics related to compliance of industrial effluent discharge: regulatory standard, policy, testing/laboratory requirements, and consent requirement. Plant operation, community empowerment, environmental risk and emergency planning, regulatory and environmental audit are rating criteria that are frequently covered in the papers that are being used to monitor compliance.