Beach erosion worsens in Tangerang
Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang
Arnan, a food stall owner, looks out from his small beach-front bamboo hut and spots the submerged concrete ruins engulfed by the Java Sea.
"About 500 meters from the coast is where my home used to stand," said the 45-year-old Arnan, pointing at the seemingly endless sea.
Arnan, who lost his home to beach erosion 11 years ago, is one of numerous residents along the north coast of Tangerang regency, Banten, who have been forced to move inland because of what locals allege is the illegal mining of sand.
Concrete rubble is the only sign left of the homes, fish ponds and shrimp farms that once existed on dozens of hectares of land that fell to the pounding waves in the coastal villages of Karang Serang, Tanjung Anom and Marga Mulya, where the sand mining takes place.
"If the sand mining continues, this village will eventually disappear into the sea," Arnan, a resident of Karang Serang, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
The chief of Karang Serang village, Firdaus, said he was powerless to stop the illegal mining.
"The government should take stern action against it," he said.
Compounding the problem is the fact that hundreds of residents make their living by dredging up the beaches and filling up trucks with sand.
"I can earn up to Rp 100,000 (US$11) a day from sand mining," said Murdih from the village of Marga Mulya.
The head of Marga Mulya village, Wardi, said stopping the mining would only cause more social and economic problems because most of the miners were village residents.
He said he had made several attempts to halt the mining, but gave up each time in the face of protests by villagers.
"They rely on sand mining as their main source of money," said Wardi, whose village has a population of 5,259.
The village head in Tanjung Anom, Muhamad Ali, said he had tried in vain to persuade residents to stop the mining.
Ali said he tried to explain to residents that their actions were damaging the environment, but the residents were more concerned about making a living.
"They always say it is a matter of filling their stomachs," Ali said. "It gives me a headache when they reason like that."
Recently built 800-meter wave breakers built by the Air Force, in addition to the 500-meter wave breakers built by the Tangerang regency administration in 2001 in Tanjung Anom, have been able to minimize the damage caused by the mining.
"However, the waves still continue to erode other areas of the 2.5-kilometer-long beach that runs in front of the villages. Over the past 15 years, at least one and a half kilometers of the coastline has been reclaimed by the sea," Ali said.