Artificial rain program in Sumatra to begin soon
The Jakarta Post, Pekanbaru, Riau
Authorities from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore will soon launch a joint cloud-seeding operation over hotspots in the north of Indonesia to induce rain aimed at curbing troubling forest fires in the region.
The 10-day operation was supposed to start on Monday, but unfavorable weather conditions forced authorities to postpone the plan.
"This artificial rain really depends on the weather conditions. If the weather is not favorable, then we'll have to postpone the cloud-seeding because of the huge cost involved," said Asep Karsidi, the head of the artificial rain unit at the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPP), said quoted by Antara.
Cloud-seeding involves releasing a salt solution to try to accelerate the formation of rain-producing clouds. It has been tried in the past with mixed results, and many scientists have questioned its efficacy.
"We carried out this kind of operation in 1997 and 2000 with mixed results. This time we'll try it again," Asep said.
Fires set by farmers, plantation owners and miners taking advantage of the dry season to clear land have raged out of control in recent weeks, with much of the acrid smoke blowing across the narrow Strait of Malacca to Malaysia.
Air pollution levels in large parts of Malaysia, including the capital city Kuala Lumpur, reached hazardous levels for about 10 days before dissipating with changing winds and rain.
Maj. Aldrin Petrus Mongan of the Indonesian Air Force said four C-130 Hercules aircraft participated in the operation. Indonesia deployed two, while two more came from Malaysia and Singapore. Aldrin said each aircraft carried between 23 and 25 crew. Malaysia has also deployed 125 firefighters to help battle forest fires in Sumatra.
The aircraft will fly over fire-ravaged forest areas in Riau, North Sumatra, Jambi, and West Kalimantan.
Indonesian authorities said on Sunday that most of the haze- causing surface brush fires were out -- but that they were still battling underground fires in peat lands, AP reported.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian office of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) urged the Indonesian government to prosecute companies that were involved in setting the forest and land fires, some of which it said were repeat offenders.
From July 18 to Aug. 16 in Riau, the conservation organization recorded that 609 hotspots were located in the concessions of companies, many of them the same companies charged by the Riau provincial government for setting fires to clear land back in 2003.
From a total of 5,420 hotspots recorded by Modis Satellite data for the same period, about half of them were located in company concessions.
"Repeated incidents of forest and land fires, both in companies' concessions and communities' plantations, indicate public and corporate ignorance in respecting the zero-burning policy set by the government of Indonesia in 2001," the WWF said.