Pollution in city rivers worse: BPLHD

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Jakartans' out of sight, out of mind attitude to domestic and industrial waste has caused the city's 13 rivers to become so polluted that if the city administration does not clean them up it will have to give up on its dream of riverine transportation.

The Jakarta Environmental Management Agency (BPLHD) reveals in its official website that the pollution level in the city's rivers is only getting worse.

Samples taken from at least 51 of its monitoring posts, which are found at 66 riverside locations in the capital, show that good quality water plunged to zero this year from 1 percent last year and mildly polluted water dropped to 5 percent from 9 percent. Moderately polluted water declined to 18 percent from 19 percent in 2004.

Parameters used to test the pollution level include salinity, turbidity, suspended particles and diluted hazardous particles (nitrate, nitrite, chloride, ammonia, phosphate, etc.)

"The worsening trend in the quality of river water reflects the administration's failure to do its duty in maintaining sustainable natural resources for the community," environmental activist Tubagus Haryo Karbiyanto told The Jakarta Post.

Tubagus, who is also a member of the Public Interest Environmental Lawyers (PIEL), called on the administration to start involving residents, particularly squatters living on riverbanks, in clean-up campaigns.

"Learning from the experience of developed countries, where the residents have become river guards in ensuring the cleanliness of the rivers, the administration can also adopt such a program," he said.

The city's rivers are under the supervision of at least 14 city agencies and governmental institutions:

The public works agency is responsible for dredging and widening rivers; the municipal administration's water control offices and the BPHLD for monitoring the water quality; the City Sanitation Agency for removing rubbish floating on, and around, rivers and the City Parks Agency and public order officers for the use of riverbanks.

The role of the central government is represented by the Ministry of Public Works as city rivers run through areas belonging to other provinces.

Environmentalists have blamed uncoordinated programs among those agencies and institutions for the city's heavily polluted waterways.

Jakarta Bay in the north of the city, where all 13 rivers end, has been treated like a dump, with reports of thousands of dead fish and a damaged marine ecosystem alarming residents but doing little to change their ways.