Once pristine, neglect turns Cisadane to mud

Once pristine, neglect turns Cisadane to mud

Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang

Cisadane River, which flows through Tangerang, used to be
where residents went fishing and children played. Now, some parts
of the river are bone dry.

The absence of dredging over the past 26 years has transformed
parts of the river, as can be seen whenever one passes Putra
bridge near Tangerang's mayoralty office, into the way it is now,
with tall grass growing in the mud.

"I used to fish here, sitting on the riverbank. But now, all I
can do is just sit on the dried mud," said 56-year old Sapardi, a
local resident who usually spends his afternoons fishing in the
river.

It is not hard to imagine what will happen during the rainy
season.

"The buildup of sedimentation has certainly lowered the
river's capability to accommodate water, especially during the
wet season. Floodwater that inundated parts of Tangerang earlier
this year happened because the river was no longer able to handle
the surplus of water," said Suparno, coordinator of Banten
province's Water Resources Management Center (BPSDA).

With a total length of 115 kilometers, Cisadane flows from its
source in Pasar Buncit village, Bogor in West Java and ends in
Teluk Naga district, Tangerang. An eight-kilometer stretch runs
from Panunggangan village in Pinang district until Neglasari
district.

According to Suparno, 360,000 cubic meters of mud has settled
on the river bed between the old Cisadane bridge on Jl. Merdeka
and Pasar Baru sluice, with sediment filling most of the 1.5-
kilometer stretch.

The last dredging of this stretch of the river took place in
1976. It was conducted thanks to the World Bank's financial
assistance through the Prosida project.

After the dredging, the width of the river measured an average
of 80 meters, while the depth was seven meters. But now, Cisadane
is just four meters deep, which means sediment has accumulated
and now reaches a height of three meters.

"In normal conditions, the amount of sediment that settles on
the river bed reaches an average of 400 particles per minute
(PPM). But during flooding, this increases to 1,450 PPM," he
said.

Suparno added that ideally, the Ministry of Resettlement and
Regional Infrastructure's main project on river region
participation (PIPWS), which is in charge of river dredging,
should dredge mud from Cisadane River once every five years, or
at least once every 10 years.

However, he urged both the Tangerang regency and municipal
administrations to dredge the river with their own money. "That's
if they are concerned about the safety of their residents from
the threat of flooding," he said.

The idea received a cold response from the chief of the
municipality's development planning board (Bappeda), Undang
Herman. He said the administration simply had no funds from its
annual budget to dredge Cisadane River.

"Floods are natural disasters that affect people in many
different places, not only in Tangerang. That's why the
administration has not allocated a special budget to dredge
Cisadane River," Undang said.

"We had proposed Rp 2 billion to the Banten provincial
administration last year to finance dredging at Pasar Baru
sluice. There, the river water is dammed and distributed into
several canals to irrigate 25,000 hectares of farming areas, but
so far there has been no response," Suparno said.

Sedimentation, he said, has also caused a drastic decline in
water quality due to industrial land pollution caused by
continuous, uncontrolled development in areas along the upper
reaches of the river and the lack of reforestation.

A Tangerang resident, H. Chaerudin, called the government to
help finance the river dredging: "Please do it now, before it's
too late...".