Brantas River in East Java heavily polluted

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.