Council asks Sutiyoso not to push for reclamation
Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The City Council has asked the City Administration not to pursue the plan to reclaim the northern coastal area of the city as the project once implemented could bring environmental damage.
Council Deputy Speaker Tarmidi Suhardjo advised the city officials to discuss the issue thoroughly with the environment minister, who has rejected the project because it is not environmentally sound.
"Officials from the central government and the city administration should meet to discuss the negative and positive aspects of the project," Tarmidi told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Tarmidi said that it was the conclusion of the closed-door meeting between the Council leaders and officials of the city administration involved in the project led by assistant to the city secretary for development affairs Irzal Djamal.
The Council summoned the officials on Monday to discuss the controversial reclamation project, which, if implemented, would affect some 2,700 hectares of sea along the 32-kilometer northern coastal area of the city.
The project, which according to executive chairman of the Jakarta Waterfront Management Board M. Sidarta is worth around Rp 20 trillion, would be developed in stages over a 30-year period.
Last month, State Minister for the Environment Nabiel Makarim rejected the reclamation plan, after conducting a new study on the draft of the environmental impact analysis (Amdal) for the project which revealed that the project was both socially and environmentally infeasible.
The ministry then uncovered several negative effects of the project. First, the reclamation project would cause the sea level to rise by up to 12 centimeters; second, it would cause social problems as thousands of fishermen will lose their source of income; third, it would damage the ocean ecosystem as some 330 million cubic meter of sand would be used for the reclamation; and fourth, it would worsen pollution around Kepulauan Seribu (Thousand Islands).
The minister also urged President Megawati Soekarnoputri to issue a decree to revoke Presidential Decree No. 52/1995 issued by former president Soeharto which become the legal basis for the city administration to implement the project.
Irzal told the press after the meeting that the city administration may ignore the recommendation of the state minister for the environment, saying that according to the law on regional autonomy, the Amdal recommendation could be issued by the provincial environmental impact management agency (Bapedalda) without being approved by the ministry.
Previously, Governor Sutiyoso also stressed that he would go ahead with the reclamation plan, saying that the project was the most feasible way to deal with the problem of limited land in the fast growing metropolis.
Chairman of the Environmental Task Force (ETF) Ahmad "Puput" Syafruddin, who took part in studying the reclamation Amdal, said that the Amdal document failed to spell out how they would deal with the negative social and environmental effects resulting from the project.
According to Puput, compensation for all risks which may be caused by the project should be taken into account in the Amdal document.
Puput said some of the negative impacts that should be taken into amount include the loss of work for hundreds of fishermen, possible worsening floods and the extinction of various species.
"The city officials and experts could not address the problems when we asked them. Therefore we conclude that the project is infeasible environmentally and socially," he added.