I

t has been two years since the government embarked on a grand scheme to clean Citarum River and its tributaries, which 25 million people depend on water and electricity.

The first year was spent planning the gargantuan task of cleaning the heavily polluted river, while last year saw the start of several programs out of a total of 80 that are planned.

The program, Integrated Citarum: Water Resources Management Investment Program — or the Citarum Roadmap for short — is a 15-year plan to reduce pollution in the Citarum River. The roadmap encompasses 80 activities, from waterway management and environmental preservation, to disaster mitigation and community empowerment.

This year, several government bodies have started running their programs, including raising awareness and constructing physical infrastructure.

The project is the first of its kind in terms of scale, and the extensive involvement of various stakeholders, from local communities and NGOs, to seven ministries and 12 local administrations.

The government teams in the field, however, have been facing various kinds of challenges.

Many factories still dump their untreated waste in the river, polluting Citarum with heavy metals that will not be easy to remove. The administrations, meanwhile, have yet to enforce the bylaw on industrial waste.

Preventing household waste from being dumped by millions of residents in the river basin areas is another extreme challenge. Household waste is the main cause of pollution, but stopping this practice will involve a lengthy and costly process of land acquisition, complex infrastructure and vast funds.

Deforestation in the upstream area due to farming also poses a problem for Citarum, as it causes annual floods in several areas.

Rays of hope come from a few community members, however. A boy named Udis, from Bandung, collects trash from a Citarum tributary every day, while villagers in another area respect a traditional ban regarding a local “forbidden” forest, where they are not allowed to hunt or log.

An official at the Balai Besar Citarum River development office, Hasanuddin, said the Citarum River is in critical condition.

“That’s why we have to act now,” he said.