City seeks Rp 12 billion to clean up Jakarta bay
City seeks Rp 12 billion to clean up Jakarta bay
Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
Those brave enough to participate in water sports in Jakarta Bay
and around the Thousand Islands may enjoy somewhat cleaner water
in the future thanks to a city proposal to clean up the bay,
which environmentalists often dub "Jakarta's cesspool".
The idea of cleaning up the heavily polluted bay came up
during a hearing between the City Council's development
commission and the Jakarta Sanitation Agency on Wednesday.
"If the council lends its support, we will press ahead with
the plan by appointing a third party to do the job, though it
will be pretty costly as we will need large vessels to transport
the wet garbage," Jakarta Sanitation Agency director Rama Boedhi
said.
Rama said the administration would allocate around Rp 1
billion per month, or Rp 12 billion per year, to pay the third
party to collect garbage from the water.
"During the first stage, we will focus on cleaning the
transportation channel from Marina Bay in Ancol, North Jakarta,
to Ayer resort island," Rama said.
The agency said that currently it only had two boats to remove
garbage from the water and only two vessels to ferry the garbage
away.
"Procuring more vessels and boats would be too costly for the
administration. That's why we are considering handing this over
to the private sector," he explained.
Jakarta Bay has become heavily polluted with trash dumped by
Jakarta residents into the city's rivers. All 13 rivers that flow
through Jakarta debouch in the bay
The lack of an adequate sewage system plus poor monitoring of
industrial waste treatment facilities by the Jakarta
administration means that most industrial plants and enterprises
discharge their waste, including toxic waste, into the city's
rivers.
Last year, the Jakarta Environmental Management Agency (BPLHD)
discovered ammonia, a highly toxic substance, in the sea off
Ancol beach and Putri Duyung beach at a level of 1.06 milligrams
per liter, far higher than the tolerable 0.03 milligrams per
liter.
Other toxic substances originating from industrial waste were
also found at dangerously high levels in the bay, including
mercury, lead, cadmium and phenol.
"We have repeatedly witnessed massive fish kills in Jakarta
Bay over the last five years owing to the heavy pollution," said
development commission chairman Sayogo Hendrosubroto.
The pollution in Jakarta Bay is also damaging coral reefs and
endangering turtles.