Bengawan Solo badly polluted

SEMARANG: Industrial waste dumped into Bengawan Solo river is posing health problem for the hundreds of thousands of people who use the river water for daily purposes in Central and East Java.

Chief of the Central Java provincial government's environmental bureau Mulyanto said yesterday that scores of factories dump their waste into the river without proper treatment.

"Hundreds of thousands of people use the river water for their daily needs such as irrigation and drinking. They are directly affected by the contamination," he said in a workshop.

According to Maryanto, only 44 factories along the river have waste water treatment facilities and only a few use them properly," he said.

Most other factories have yet to build waste water treatment plants. They consider the facilities just too expensive, he added. (har)