Brantas River in East Java heavily polluted

Ainur R. Sophiaan, The Jakarta Post, Surabaya

Massive sand quarrying, industrial wastes and illegal logging have heavily polluted the Brantas River, threatening the future of the entire population of East Java.

The 320 kilometer-long river plays a significant role in the lives of the province's inhabitants, irrigating some 345 hectares of rice fields, generating 900 million kilowatts of electricity and supplying 150 million cubic meters of water to both people and industry each year.

The Surabaya administration however is being confronted with a number of problems.

The city-owned water company PT Jasa Tirta I, which has managed the city's water supply since 1990, looks unable to ensure that supply will continue due to poor management and a severe lack of funds for maintenance.

Combined with a population uneducated in environmental issues, the factors have contributed to the deterioration of the river and concerns the natural resource will be unable to support the lives of the province's 16 million people.

Jasa Tirta president Roeswandi Usman said there were hundreds of factories and industries which dumped wastes in the river which flowed through 15 regencies and municipal towns.

Roeswandi said that the problem was that the company didn't have the authority to take the necessary measures to prevent pollution.

"We just submit samples to the local office of the Environmental Waste Management Agency (Bapedalda). Lamentably, the agency, that frequently hires local police, does not go by the book, with all problems remaining unresolved," Roeswandi said.

"Frankly speaking, this is really a dilemma for us as we are not entitled to claims over losses while the cost to manage the waste water is high and consumes much time," he said during a recent tour of development projects along the river.

Other tour participants were executives of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), the Official Development Program and the local office of the Environmental Impact Management Agency.

Roeswandi blamed foreign industries, including Japanese factories, for dumping its waste water into the river.

"It's funny, we have resorted to a cat-and-mouse game because the industries are dumping waste into the river at night," he said.

Jasa Tirta has now installed monitoring instruments at several locations to detect river contamination 24 hours a day.

Bapedalda research and development staff member Raymond Valiant said his office had completed samples and gathered evidence of river pollution but any action was dependent on law enforcement officials.

"If it goes on like this, what we have been doing so far will amount to nothing," Valiant said.

The biggest dam on the river provides quality drinking water, aside from generating electric power for Java and Bali.

Deforestation by the locals is rampant, posing a serious threat to water catchment areas along the river. The city administration is finding it difficult to curb the deforestation.

The local government has distributed 5000 seedlings of teak trees to residents in Malang regency to plant on the river's banks.

To make matters worse, sand quarrying by locals, mainly those living between the towns of Mojokerto and Jombang, has triggered floods leading to property destruction.

Sand miners have been using more advanced and expensive technology, such as dump trucks and other machinery, and for years had been operating around the clock.

"So you can conclude which class of people are involved in this kind of business," Valiant said.

Jasa Tirta in cooperation with the local administration had periodically hired police to crack down on quarrying, but efforts had so far failed due to contradictory policies.

Some districts and regional administrations had even issued regulations obliging the miners to pay tax while Jasa Tirta and the provincial legislative council had repeatedly called for a ban on quarrying.

Another problem besieging Jasa Tirta was the chronic lack of funds for operational and maintenance costs. To date the company had relied only on sales to customers of Rp 35 billion annually to cover costs of Rp 95 billion.

With its assets of about Rp 7,9 trillion, 80 percent of which belongs to the central government, Jasa Tirta currently owns, among other things, nine dams and also carries out a number of irrigation and development projects.

In total the company has invested Rp 5.7 trillion in the Brantas River development project, most of which has been donated by the Japanese government through the JBIC.

To finance several development and maintenance projects, Jasa Tirta has asked the Japanese government for a grant of US$10 million and a loan of around US$20 million but the donor country was still studying the proposal.

The JBIC's Jakarta representative, Nobuo Hazeyama, said that Japanese assistance was directed to more urgent dam, irrigation and electricity projects in the country's eastern region.

"So far there has been no new commitment, but we'll see," he said, adding he was deeply concerned about Japanese investors in the province who degraded the environment.