Tangerang residents use polluted Cisadane water

Multa Fidrus, The Jakarta Post, Tangerang

Even though the Cisadane River is seriously polluted with industrial waste, residents living along the river in Tangerang regularly use the water for their daily needs.

"As poor people, we have no other choice but to use water from the river even though it is very smelly and the clothes that we wash with the water turns yellowish," Chaeruman, a resident of Grendeng subdistrict, Tangerang municipality, told The Jakarta Post last week.

The 75-year-old grandfather who was born and grew up by the river, still remembers how clean the water was when he was a child.

"I used to play in the river with my friends. The sun would shine right down on our heads, but we didn't feel the heat because the wind blew so softly among the shade trees. We would dive into the river and swim until afternoon," he recalled.

At the time, he said, lots of different kinds of fish lived in the river, which is now muddy, brownish, foul smelling and barren of fish, except for the sapu-sapu fish.

Zulkifli, a resident of Pasar Baru subdistrict, said he had to start buying clean water after everyone in his family twice suffered from skin diseases because of the river water.

"My family had a skin disease and we all had to go to the hospital. Doctors said the disease was caused by polluted water," he said.

Dian, a 50-year-old mother who lives by the river in Mekarsari subdistrict, Neglasari district, is angry about the pollution being dumped in the Cisadane River, which was once the pride of Tangerang.

"The industrial firms just dump their untreated waste into the river without thinking about the danger to residents who use the water for their daily needs," the mother of five told the Post.

"We want the administration to control the industrial firms so that they cannot dump their waste into the river before processing it properly," she said.

Besides the residents who live along the river and who use the polluted water, 25,000 hectares of paddy fields in the Teluk Naga, Sepatan, Rajeg, Mauk, Pakuhaji and Sukadiri districts also depend of water from the Cisadane River, especially during periods of drought.

Two local tap water companies, the municipal administration's PDAM Kota and PDAM Tirta Kerta Raharja of the regency administration, also take water from the river, process it and distribute it to thousands of customers in Tangerang and Jakarta.

When the Post rented a boat and cruised down the river in the middle of the day, a number of industrial firms were spotted dumping waste into the river.

Drainage pipes from a large textile producer in Cikokol continuously sprayed reddish wastewater into the river, while foul smelling wastewater from a nearby plant belonging to a palm oil producer sprayed into the river.

Some 50 meters away, a bad smell from a tofu factory's drainage filled the air. Further upstream, the Post saw colorful waste coming from another large textile producer.

These were just a few examples of the dozens of industrial firms that regularly dump their waste into the river.

However, the head of the Tangerang municipal environmental agency, M. Akip, defended the industrial firms, saying they disposed of their waste only after treating it.

"We regularly guide industrial firms on how to treat wastewater and we oblige any industrial firm that disposes waste into the river to deliver reports to this agency every six months," Akip said.

He said the agency also patrolled the river to monitor whether industrial firms were processing their waste before dumping it into the river.

"So far, we have received no reports from community members who use the water for their daily needs about any impacts of polluted water," he said.

The agency office has listed 40 industrial firms, comprising pulp, textile, palm oil, battery and leather producers, that dispose of waste into the river. All of these firms reportedly are equipped with waste treatment facilities.