Communities clean up the Ciliwung river

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Sun, 09/17/2006 9:03 AM

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Once plied with boats during the colonial era, the Ciliwung River is now a contaminated, floating dump.

However, boats and rafts were seen on the river again Saturday, with about 700 volunteers taking part in an organized cleanup.

Students, engineers and local residents cleaned several parts of the waterway, one of the most polluted in the country, in order to raise awareness of how waste affects the environment.

""Ciliwung has reached the level of (the city's) most-polluted river. About 40 percent of the waste thrown into the river stays there, 20 percent flows to the sea and only 40 percent of it gets picked up by scavengers or by the city administration,"" event coordinator from the Indonesian Engineers Organization (PII), Rudianto Handojo, said.

PII, a 54-year-old organization, sponsored the ""Clean Up Ciliwung Program"" to mitigate water shortages during dry season and flooding during the wet season.

""Bad garbage management in the river contributes to the environmental imbalances in Jakarta,"" Rudianto said.

The Ciliwung, which runs from Puncak to Jakarta Bay, is ranked in the bottom 8 percent of the country's most-polluted rivers.

In 1689, before the river was heavily contaminated by raw sewerage, household and industrial waste, people could drink water straight from the stream. In 1740, waste from hospitals in Jakarta began to be thrown into the river. This caused a high death rate in the city because many patients in the hospitals were infected by dysentery and cholera. Administrative neglect for over the past hundred years has turned the waterway into a hazardous cesspool.

""We have no target for the volume of garbage that we have to pick up today. The most important thing is to create awareness about simple technology that we can use to improve our environment,"" Rudianto told The Jakarta Post.

After collecting the trash along the river banks, on foot or in boats, the volunteers were told how to use organic waste to produce compost and create ""biogas machines"" that could transform animal excrement into energy.

They were also shown technology that could filter opaque river flows into sanitized drinking water.

Composters cost about Rp 100,000 each and water purifiers devices cost from Rp 950,000 to Rp 1.5 million. The most expensive filters can change polluted water into potable drinks, while a more simple version separates out minerals and dangerous heavy metals.

""People can buy these devices from PII or local universities,"" Novrizal said. The hardest part of the waste education is to encourage communities to continue recycling, he said.

""If all the people in Jakarta committed themselves to the right waste management systems, there would be no more incidents, such as the one in Bantar Gebang dump in Bekasi,"" he said.

The trash slide earlier this month killed three scavengers and injured five others.

Deputy State Minister for the Environment, Sudaryono, who attended the cleanup, said a presidential decree would be issued soon about pollution control on the Ciliwung.

""Hopefully this will decrease the level of pollution after five years,"" he said.

Gufron, a volunteer from state high school SMA 37 in Tebet, South Jakarta, said the hands-on experience taught him the need for a proper waste management system for the city.

""However, next time, I think the promoter should also invite kindergarten and elementary students here, besides high school and university students,"" he said. (03)

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