Jakarta in dire need of better sewage system

Jakarta in dire need of better sewage system

Urip Hudiono, Jakarta

This is the first of a series of three articles on the
environmental problems caused by untreated sewage in the capital,
and the inevitable river and marine pollution it causes.

Jakartans were startled to see untold thousands of fish washed up
dead on the beaches of Jakarta Bay in May, but quickly accepted
the explanations of officials that it was a natural phenomenon.

It nevertheless raised concerns about pollution in the bay's
waters, as further investigations indicated that the oxygen-
depleting algae proliferation was spurred by a high level of
nutrients in the water originating from inorganic and organic
waste.

While the inorganic waste is mostly untreated industrial
waste, the organic waste is basically raw sewage discharged into
rivers which finally ends up in the bay.

Indications that untreated sewage has been finding its way
into the city's rivers are nothing new, as the Jakarta
Environmental Management Agency (BPLHD) has repeatedly reported
its discovery of E-coli bacteria in all of the 13 city rivers it
regularly monitors.

The bacteria, which come from human feces and can cause
diarrhea, have also been found to have contaminated up to 80
percent of shallow artesian wells in the city.

These findings have led to questions about just how well
Jakarta manages its sewage.

Data from the BPLHD shows that Jakarta's population of some 12
million people produce no less than 1.5 billion liters of sewage
each day -- far above the total 600,000 liters that can be
handled by the Pulo Gebang, East Jakarta, and Duri Kosambi, West
Jakarta, sewage treatment plants.

Jakarta also has a US$6 billion sewage treatment plant in
Setiabudi, South Jakarta, which utilizes a network of underground
pipes to collect waste water from surrounding houses and
buildings. This large-scale treatment plant can process up to 500
liters per second, or over 40 million liters per day.

In the absence of adequate treatment facilities, city
residents have to rely on private septic tank installations, but
many of them are inadequately designed, according to the BPLHD.

The agency revealed that only 39 percent of the septic tanks
can properly neutralize untreated sewage. The rest, meanwhile,
can barely process human waste, let alone handle other types of
waste water, such as bathing and washing water, which is simply
discharged into the city's drainage system to end up in its
rivers.

Other residents simply pipe their raw sewage out into rivers
despite the existence of regulations against this.

The city's 36 large-sized 6,000-liter capacity sewage trucks
and private sector's 83 smaller 2,000-liter capacity trucks empty
the septic tanks. A septic tank normally needs to be drained once
or twice a year.

However, many truck drivers prefer to discharge the sewage
into the city's rivers instead of transporting it to the
treatment plants.

Amir Sagala, a waste management official with the Jakarta
Sanitation Agency, said that it was impossible to rearrange the
already chaotic sewage treatment system, pointing out that
converting the city's existing system of septic tanks into one
based on sewage pipes would be a difficult and costly task.

"This city's infrastructure is, unfortunately, only being
developed now, after the city has been built," he said. "However,
I'm sure that in particular business districts with high-rise
buildings, or newly developed residential areas, it would still
be possible to adopt and implement such a piped sewage system,"
he said recently.

Meanwhile, Pudjo Prihadi Santoso, director of city-owned
sewerage company PAL Jaya, which operates the Setiabudi sewage
treatment system, said that the construction of an integrated
sewage treatment system for the whole city would be extremely
expensive.

Pudjo explained that a piped sewage system like the one in
Setiabudi would only be economically feasible if 40 percent of
its costs were allocated to construction, maintenance and the
operation of the treatment plant alone.

"If the ratio is anything less than that, then the project
will be more concerned with installing pipes than with treating
the sewage itself," he said. "The city's level topography,
meanwhile, would also mean additional investment for pumps to
ensure that the sewage flowed properly into the treatment plant's
aeration pond."