Shortage of funds halts development of garbage dump

JAKARTA (JP): The city administration's plan to build a new garbage dump at Ciangir, Tangerang, to replace the existing one at Bantar Gebang, Bekasi, is being hindered by a lack of funds, an official said on Friday.

Head of the city sanitation agency, Saksono Hoesodo, said that due to the fund shortage, no physical work has been done on the 95.5-hectare plot of land reserved for the dump.

He explained that the Bantar Gebang dump was predicted to be unusable within five years.

Saksono said that while trash piled up everyday at the 128- hectare Bantar Gebang site, some of it 12 meters high, the agency had not received any funds for the Ciangir site, even though it was expected to start operating by 2001.

"The construction of infrastructure, including a road network leading to it, and the procurement of waste processors need to be done now," Saksono told The Jakarta Post.

"The construction of about 10 kilometers of roads to the new site should have started this year. But, there's absolutely no money," Saksono said.

He said the site was bought from 721 local residents at a cost of Rp 15 billion.

Saksono said some American investors have expressed interest in investing in the site, but the administration was still considering the offer.

Ongky Sukasah, assistant to the city secretary for development affairs, said on Friday that the administration should grab any opportunity to get investors to invest in the dump's construction.

"But, the partnership should guarantee the employment of hundreds of Indonesian workers in the labor-intensive project," Ongky said.

Earlier this week, Saksono said the administration was investigating a few methods of waste management but most of them would either be expensive or contaminate the land.

"One of them is open dumping. This is to literally bury the garbage into the land. This would definitely contaminate and damage the land," Saksono said.

"Another is sanitary landfill. Here, the land is safeguarded by a watertight construction that does not allow the alkalis produced by the garbage to permeate into land."

This method is currently being used at Bantar Gebang, he said, adding that this system was usable for at least 12 years.

"The watertight construction costs Rp 1.1 billion per hectare and the waste management itself will take Rp 2.5 billion per hectare with this method," Saksono said.

He said a method being considered for the new site was using incinerators.

"However, incinerating 1,000 tons of garbage a day would cost between Rp 400 billion and Rp 500 billion. The problem is, who will invest that kind of money?"

He added that other methods included the waste to be converted into chemicals.

"This is productive, too, but it would take too much money," he said.

An official of the National Development Planning Board's Tangerang office, Doddy Hermiyono, said the administration still did not possess an environmental impact assessment for the Ciangir site.

Doddy said this was going against existing regulations.

"The assessment report should be in the hands of the administration first, before the issuance of a permit declaring the location as a waste dump," Doddy said.

He added that his office needed assurance from the city administration that the "liquid produced from garbage" will not contaminate the environment. (41/ylt)