Tourism plan for Serangan may have environmental cost

By Putu Wirata

DENPASAR (JP): Close on the heels of controversies surrounding giant sculptures and a tourist project in Tanah Lot, development plans for Serangan Island, a 10-minute motor boat ride from Benoa port in Bali, have raised another wave of local ire.

Hindu followers had traditionally relied on boats to cross a kilometer of brackish water before entering the courtyard of the Sakenan temple for the Kuningan rite on Serangan.

This past Sept. 27, hundreds of residents were astonished to find they no longer needed the boats -- they also could not see the open sea in the south as the land had been reclaimed.

The about 600 fishermen and their families who earn their livelihood around Serangan are now anxious about their future.

"I can no longer go fishing," said Pan Lobeng, 70, one of the fishermen. Fishermen earn from Rp 10,000 to Rp 25,000 each day they cast their nets.

The local administration had issued a ban on land-filling activities but exempted a private company, PT Bali Turtle Island Development (PT BTID).

The company gained permission to expand Serangan by four times its original size to up to 500 hectares; the plan last year was to expand it to 300 hectares.

This will take around 9 million cubic meters of stone.

A five-star hotel, golf course, marina and several other tourist amenities are planned, and Serangan is expected to be a tourist resort similar to Nusa Dua.

Local residents have not been asked to move but it is clear they cannot remain put for good.

"This is structural impoverishment," said Putu Suasta, a local young entrepreneur and observer of social developments in Bali.

Although the resort is designed to bring in greater revenue for the provincial administration, environmentalists also fear possible damage to its mangrove forest and ensuing erosion. They claim the forest has helped Serangan withstand erosion for centuries.

"The development is actually against the findings of a survey in 1971, which did not recommend Serangan as a tourist resort," said architect Nyoman Gelebet, who was part of that survey.

"But the plan is being imposed regardless of the result of this research, and nature ultimately will have its say."

Revision

Gelebet, a lecturer at the School of Engineering of Udayana University, was referring to the study by an international research institute, SCETTO. It recommended 12 tourist areas for development in Bali, but Serangan was not included because of its vulnerability to erosion.

In 1981, there was a revision of the spatial layout of Bali under the Master Spatial Layout Planning Board. Once again, Serangan was not on the list of sites for tourist development.

A decade later, a survey by Scott and Purfy also concurred Serangan was not fitting for tourism.

This survey team had reportedly come up against intense pressure to vouch for Serangan's suitability for tourism, but members had threatened to resign rather than manipulate results.

Reclamation began anyway, amid protests by activists and intellectuals.

"This reclamation and the plan to be carried out by BTID will destroy the cultural system of local people and also that of Bali," Putu Suasta said.

The atoll houses Pura Sakenan, believed to have been built by Dang Hyang Nirartha some six centuries ago.

According to a decree (bhisama) from the Indonesian Hindu Council, construction of other buildings except those related to temple activities are barred from around pura dang kahyangan, sacred structures under which Pura Sakenan is classified.

In an earlier case testing this religious edict, the Bakrie Group had established PT Bali Nirwana Resort to build a huge resort near the holy Tanah Lot temple.

Bakrie finally revised its spatial layout plan after Bali's majority Hindu population had been outraged.

"If a violation of this decree occurs again in the case of Serangan Island, the administration's issuance of the permit will have gone too far," Putu Suasta said.

BTID has claimed in its defense that it was bettering the lot of the local people.

"We will not send away local residents of the island, but will provide them with 30 hectares of land resulting from the reclamation," director of the company, Hendro Waduyo, said in Denpasar.

He said the project had provided jobs to 1,400 people.

Assistant manager of PT BTID, I GAN Saputra, insisted the project was beneficial to the Serangan community.

"Reclamation is in fact intended to save Serangan Island," he said.

An aerial photograph taken of the island in 1992, he said, shows that the island was narrow in its center and erosion occurred at 10 meters per year.

Unless reclamation is conducted, he said, the island could literally split into two in 10-15 years.

Gelebet countered that Serangan Island and its tourist facilities could eventually sink, based on results of the earlier studies.

In the last few months, reclamation has also continued on Sanur's Mertasari and Padanggalak coasts.

Gelebet said the reclamation had destroyed many sources of income for Serangan residents.

Environmentalists are most concerned about the mangroves on the island's west and northern coasts.

They also worry that reclamation will also shift the current flow to the east, leading to erosion of the Benoa coast.

Hindu institutions and Balinese intellectuals have been relatively quiet about the controversy. Their silence has been interpreted in different ways.

"Their unwillingness to speak could mean either puput or puputan," said Dewa Ngurah Swastha, chairman of Forum of Indonesian Hindu Observers in Denpasar. Puput means finished, but puputan means fighting to the end.