Tangerang residents use polluted Cisadane water

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.