Dilemma caused by sand quarrying at Mt. Merapi

Mimin Dwi Hartono, Contributor, Yogyakarta

It was 1 p.m. in Boyong hamlet, Hargobinangun village, Pakem subdistrict, Sleman, at the foot of Mount Merapi.

The sun shone very brightly, while the heat was at its peak.

Sunarto, 63, a Boyong villager, paused for a while from digging sand in his yard with a shovel. Taking a deep breath, he wiped the sweat from his wrinkled face before sitting next to his shovel on the ground.

"I'm forced to do this because I have no other way to support my family," Sunarto said.

Although quarrying sand on personal property has been banned by the village administration for some time because of the environmental damage that the activity can cause, many of the villagers there, including Sunarto, continue to do it, mostly for financial reasons.

Sunarto, for example, has been quarrying sand on his 600 square meter plot for three years, attracted mainly by the quick returns that he can gain.

From sand extraction, Sunarto can earn Rp 35,000 per truck, which would normally take two to three days to load. With a truck of sand every three days, he has been able to earn some Rp 4.2 million a year, or nearly Rp 13 million over three years.

That has enabled him to send his children to high school and, most importantly, helped him support his family.

The activity, however, has left his land with craters that are 10 meters to 20 meters deep. The trees on it have fallen over. The same thing has also occurred on neighboring properties.

Sunarto, and others, though, say that they do not regret their decision. "I'm glad we extracted it ourselves instead of selling the land; we earned money from it while at the same time retaining ownership of the land," Sunarto said.

Hargobinangun is not the only village on the southern slopes of the volcano where sand quarrying is rampant. Other villages, such as Umbulharjo, Purwobinangun, and Wonokerto face exactly the same problem.

In Boyong alone, there are at least 52 places where sand is quarried on private land, ranging from hundreds to thousands of square meters, while in Umbulharjo there are some 35 spots.

Sand quarrying is a complex problem in which the wider concern to preserve the environment is in direct opposition to people's individual concern to earn money to cover their basic needs.

So critical is the problem that such activities often incite conflict between local communities that are concerned about the environment and property owners as well as quarry workers.

What happened last April near the Boyong River is an example.

Dozens of people from the neighboring village of West Kaliurang staged a demonstration, demanding that workers stop quarrying immediately because it had damaged the riverbank that directly borders West Kaliurang.

West Kaliurang villagers were concerned because the riverbank was only 50 meters away from people's houses.

Consequently, Hargobinangun village head Mulyono asked the owners of the 52 quarrying spots to halt their activities. He also promised to seek better alternatives for them to make a living. Still, some ignored his request.

"We have yet to arrive at an acceptable solution," explained Supar, a villager who wished to continue.

The dangers of uncontrolled quarrying are quite apparent to all. Although most use only manual equipment like shovel or crowbars, they can dig to a depth of 20 meters.

Moreover, as many of the quarrying sites are also within housing complexes, some houses are also prone to subsidence because the edge of the digging site is sometimes only five meters away from the buildings.

That excludes countless trees that have fallen due to the activities.

The most tragic occurrence was some three years ago, when a landslide buried Dalinem, a housewife, alive while she was quarrying sand on her land.

According to Boyong village chief Sokimun, 63, quarrying in his area started in 1990. Yet, he said, he felt unable to tell people to stop because they were on their own property.

"I feel uneasy about it," Sokimun said.

However, he added, the most difficult thing was that no viable alternative had been identified. All he could do was to persuade locals not to use machinery.

A recent solution, eventually, came from the Hargobinangun administration and Sleman regental mining office. They offered loans for people to buy dairy cows, with a repayment period of up to four years.

The regental forestry and agriculture office, similarly, has also offered villagers rolling funds to buy sheep to breed.

Take-up has been patchy, though, especially for loans to buy dairy cows that offer an interest rate of 12 percent a year, as the rate is perceived as too high.

Sheep breeding, similarly, is unattractive, as it cannot provide a quick return.

It seems that the local authorities have much to do; they must persuade locals to halt their environmentally damaging activities, and make them realize that, in the long term, damage to the environment is much more costly than the value of the sand they could quarry.