Incinerators effective, but doubt linger

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The development of incineration plants may be the solution to the city's chronic waste problems, by reducing its dependency on neighboring regions to handle the 6,000 tons of garbage it produces daily. However, the City Council has brushed off the administration's plan for next year, still haunted by the failure of a similar project in 2001.

In the City Development Plan draft, the administration proposed to the councillors a budget worth Rp 400 billion (some US$ 42.10 million) for next year's incinerator project, which, according to the officials, could handle 4,000 tons of garbage per day.

As stated by the relevant officials, the administration was inspired by neighboring country Singapore, which successfully developed incineration plants. It incinerated some 90 percent of its 5,800 tons of daily garbage.

If the proposal is approved, it will be the largest waste- treatment project funded by the city budget. Four places -- Duri Kosambi and Rawa Buaya in West Jakarta, as well as Sunter and Marunda in North Jakarta -- have been prepared for the projects.

The head of the City Sanitation Agency has argued that the planned project would be free of corruption.

"Last time we were not prepared, and there was collusion in the procurement of the machines that involved both officials in my office and several councillors," he told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.

In 2001, the city paid Rp 3.2 billion to purchase 10 incinerators to be placed in different subdistricts, but they arrived a year later.

Also, the specifications of the incinerators were not as expected and, thus, they were rarely used. Many of them have even become scrap metal.

The officials are determined to use the incinerators as an alternative to the 104-hectare landfill in Bantar Gebang district, Bekasi, which was opposed by locals who allegedly suffered skin, digestion and respiratory problems caused by untreated garbage in the dump.

In December 2001, garbage accumulated all over the city after Bekasi administration arbitrarily closed the dump, as it was not satisfied with the tipping fees paid by Jakarta.

The crisis ended after the central government told the Bekasi municipality to reopen the dump, requiring that Jakarta pay Rp 14 billion for the use of Bantar Gebang in 2002 and 2003.

Early this year, however, Jakarta again experienced another waste problem. This time it was Governor Sutiyoso who ordered the closure of the dump after he refused to pay tipping fees for each ton of garbage disposed.

Because of the closure, the city was forced to dispose of its garbage in Cilincing, North Jakarta, without any treatment. The garbage caused serious environmental damage, including polluting fish farms there, killing tens of thousands of fish and shrimp.

Such difficulties showed city leaders that the city could no longer rely on other regions to treat its garbage.

During 2002 and 2003, the city administration signed Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with 13 foreign and local private companies that were interested in establishing waste-treatment facilities in the city.

Initially, those companies offered various technologies to convert garbage into commodities like compost, liquid fertilizer and electricity. But nothing came of most of the MOUs as the city could not afford the tipping fees requested by those companies.

The only success story was the construction of a waste-treatment plant in Bojong, Bogor, last year. The administration agreed to pay a Rp 53,000 tipping fee for each ton of garbage treated in the plant, which had changed from using bale press technology to incineration.

However, the city could not dump garbage there due to the opposition of locals.