Tangerang Regency Prepares Temporary Waste Site After Landfill Fire
The Tangerang Regency government has prepared a two-hectare plot of land as a temporary waste disposal site following a fire at the Jatiwaringin Final Disposal Site (TPA) in Mauk District. Tangerang Regent Maesyal Rasyid stated that the measure was taken to ensure waste collection services from residential areas continue to operate normally while firefighting efforts at the Jatiwaringin TPA are still underway. “It is running normally, we have prepared two hectares of land for temporary use,” Maesyal said on Tuesday (7/7).
Head of the Tangerang Regency Environmental and Sanitation Agency (DLHK), Ujat Sudrajat, said the volume of waste that must be handled daily reaches approximately 1,500 tonnes. He explained that the temporary disposal site is a solution to prevent waste collection activities from being halted. “If we calculate, at a minimum, 250 trucks per day multiplied by six cubic metres each, that’s at least 1,500 tonnes a day,” he said.
Ujat explained that the land now being used as a temporary disposal site was previously prepared as a supporting facility for a Waste-to-Energy (PSEL) processing project. The area was originally planned to store residual waste from incineration, namely Fly Ash and Bottom Ash (FABA), produced by the PSEL operations. “So the waste (at PSEL) is burned, and there will definitely be dust, fly ash and bottom ash. We had to prepare land to store the ash. This means the land currently used for temporary disposal is the land intended for storing FABA,” he clarified.
He added that once the fire is extinguished and TPA operations return to normal, all waste stored at the temporary location will be transferred back to the Jatiwaringin TPA area. The fire at the Jatiwaringin TPA has been burning since Tuesday (30/6). The incident is suspected to have been triggered by extreme heat that ignited methane gas within the waste pile. Joint personnel continue to battle the blaze using ground and aerial methods, including fire engines, heavy equipment, water-bombing helicopters, and injection techniques applied by Manggala Agni personnel to reach hotspots beneath the surface of the waste pile.