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...".