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.