Trying to Stop Pollution From Killing a Lifeline

Indonesians collecting plastic rubbish last year for recycling on the Citarum River, the main source of household water for Jakarta.

 

By PETER GELLING

Published: December 13, 2008

 

BEKASI, Indonesia ― The Citarum River, which winds its way through West Java past terraced rice paddies and teeming cities, is an assault on the senses. Visitors can smell the river before they see it.
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Some fishermen still make their living off the river's fouled waters, but many are no longer casting lures. Instead, they row their boats through floating garbage, foraging for old tires and other trash they can sell.

 

The river, considered by many environmentalists to be among the world's most polluted, is woven tightly into the lives of the West Javanese.

 

It provides 80 percent of household water for Jakarta's 14 million people, irrigates farms that supply 5 percent of Indonesia's rice and is a source of water for more than 2,000 factories, which are responsible for a fifth of the country's industrial output, according to the Asian Development Bank.

 

Villagers living along its banks use the Citarum's dangerous waters to wash their clothes ― and themselves.

 

Almost everyone sees the river as something of a movable dump: a convenient receptacle for factories' chemical-laced effluent, farms' pesticide-filled runoff, and human waste.

 

As a result, in stretches of the river near Jakarta, fish have been almost wiped out, destroying the livelihoods of thousands of fishermen.

 

"I know the color of the river is not right," said Sutri, the owner of a small restaurant in Bekasi, an industrial suburb of Jakarta. "But I don't know anything about dangerous chemicals. Anyway, there is nowhere else for me to get water."

 

Sutri ― who like many Indonesians uses only one name ― said she washed the restaurant's dishes in the river, along with her clothes and her children.

 

Environmentalists blame rapid, and unregulated, industrialization and urbanization over the past 20 years for the degradation of the 5,000-square-mile river basin.

 

The environmental damage is already costing lives; flooding, caused by deforestation and drains clogged with garbage, is a constant problem in cities along the Citarum.

 

The list of woes is worrying enough that the development bank committed this month to provide Indonesia with a $500 million, multiyear loan to finance a wide-ranging cleanup and rehabilitation plan devised by the bank and the government.

 

The money would be used clean the Citarum and the West Tarum Canal, which connects it to Jakarta, and to create a long-term plan for how to best use the river. A portion of the loan would go toward setting up an independent organization that would become the steward of the Citarum.

 

But even before the bank has begun to dole out the loan, it has opposition from local civic groups. They fear that the government is taking on too much debt and that there are inadequate protections to ensure that the poor see enough benefits and that the money is not lost to the corruption that is endemic in Indonesia.

 

"We are worried that the money could be lost through corruption," said Nugraha, 30, a community activist who has been working to clean up this Jakarta suburb since he graduated from high school.

 

"And we are worried the farmers will be left out," he continued. "The focus seems to be on the people of Jakarta, not the local people here."

 

That the battle lines are being drawn so early, and despite the obvious need for change, is not surprising. "Water wars" in the United States and elsewhere can be nasty affairs.

 

Like most such battles, the fight over the Citarum will revolve around the complex issues of equity, economic development and environmental protection. Coming up with a plan that satisfies everyone's needs will be difficult.

 

Raising community activists' concerns, the first $50 million of the Asian Development Bank's loan is designated for cleaning up the canal that brings the river's waters to Jakarta, and for additional treatment plants. Because of health concerns, residents of the city rarely drink out of the tap, opting instead for bottled water.

 

Christopher Morris, a water resources engineer with the development bank, says it is committed to financing projects over 15 years that will benefit all the river's users. Not all of the projects can be done quickly, he said.

 

"We are taking a long-term approach while recognizing there are some things we can fix quickly," Mr. Morris said. "But changing the behavior of the community takes a lot of careful planning and preparation."

 

Among the goals: building waste treatment plants to clean household water for the Greater Jakarta area, creating more dams so that additional water will be available for growing communities like Bandung, Indonesia's fourth largest city, and simply cleaning the river so people living near it, including fishermen, can again depend on the source of water.

 

The plan calls for reforesting stretches of the river basin to help erosion and landslides that clog the river and regularly cause floods in Bandung, in Bekasi and elsewhere.

 

The tricky part of the work will be getting the many people who rely on the river for their living, or simply to live, to agree to changes. Conflicts can arise over the allocation of water between farmers who use it for irrigation and city dwellers. And trying to get farmers to use more efficient irrigation methods, so there is more water for others, can be challenging.

 

The solution proposed by the Asian Development Bank and the Indonesian government is a "water council," with half the representatives from government agencies and half from the communities involved and nongovernmental organizations.

 

What authority the council would have remains to be seen; different levels of government already disagree about water allocation.

 

Of particular concern to community activists is how this council might be manipulated, becoming yet another avenue for corrupt practices.

 

Mr. Morris said the bank had not been blind to the opportunities for the money to be misused. That, he said, is why the bank decided to parcel the loan out over many years.

 

"The point is to make the money available to the government in an efficient way, so they aren't sitting with a loan and paying charges on it until they actually need to use it," he said. "But it also allows us to put in some safeguards and implement our anticorruption policies and other policies the Asian Development Bank promotes."