City to go ahead with incinerator project

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The city administration is to proceed with its plan to procure expensive incinerators, although critics are questioning why it is reviving a system that proved inadequate to solve to capital's recurrent waste problem.

Controversy has also been raised by the city's proposing that Rp 400 billion (US$43.96 million) be allocated from the draft 2005 budget for the project.

Deputy Governor Fauzi Bowo said on Monday that if the procurement of incinerators resulted in a deficit, the administration would rely on its emergency reserve fund.

"Our emergency fund exceeds the regulated 5 percent of the budget. It will be appropriate if we can use some of the surplus to finance projects that have a beneficial impact for the public," he said on Monday after a general City Council session on the 2005 city development plan.

The city has Rp 836 billion in the emergency fund, or 6.6 percent of its 2004 budget of Rp 12.6 trillion.

The administration has proposed to channel Rp 250 billion of the fund toward financing several major projects, including the busway expansion, the East Flood Canal construction and the incinerator project, of which a part is to install four new incinerators by 2007.

During the session, Fauzi read out a statement from Governor Sutiyoso in response to councillors' questions on the 2005 development plan.

Sutiyoso said in the statement that the administration had no other choice but to use incinerators to process its 6,000 tons of daily waste, because the sanitary landfill and composting systems required vast property to dump the waste.

"We will not use small incinerators like those that have been utilized in 21 subdistricts since 2001. The incinerators have a low capacity and posed adverse environmental impacts," Fauzi read.

The incinerators being considered burn garbage at 5,000 degrees Celsius, and Singapore, Germany and other European countries used a similar model, according to Sutiyoso.

However, Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) faction councillor Muhayar blasted the administration's plan as "backward".

"The administration dropped the incineration system after it was found to be ineffective. The city then turned to more advanced technologies such as bio-fertilizers and bale presses, so why is it planning to apply a system that failed," he said.

Golkar councillor Zaenudin also urged the administration to revise the plan. "The administration must give us a good reason as to why the last incinerator project failed."

A waste management expert with the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), Sri Bebassari, said earlier that the administration should carry out a feasibility study for at least three years before implementing the incineration technology.

"A large incinerator, which can burn around 1,000 tons of waste a day, costs up to Rp 1.3 trillion to purchase," she said.

The administration bought 15 incinerators between 2000 and 2001, but the machines required a great amount of kerosene to operate, making them too costly and inefficient, as well as extremely pollutive.