T

em>The heavily polluted Citarum River has become a vector for disease for the 25 million people in western Java who rely on it for potable water and irrigation. In the first of three articles, The Jakarta Post’s Tifa Asrianti reports on the river’s deteriorating condition and its public health effects.

Nurhayati, 38, a resident of Sukamaju village in Majalaya, Bandung regency held up her right hand.

Compared to her smooth left hand, the right was wrinkled and had swollen wounds, making it look as if it belonged to a much older person.

“This has been going on for eight months. At night it feels hot and itchy. I can’t concentrate on my work,” Nur said.

She is one of hundreds of people in Sukamaju suffering from the same symptoms.

While medication obtained from a local health community center has helped other residents with the same malady, the problem will return if the residents continue to draw water from the river.

Citarum River traverses 269 kilometers through nine regencies and three cities. Of the 25 million people who depend on the river, 10 million live along its banks, split evenly between urban and rural residents.

There are significant agricultural activities along the riverbanks, interspersed with scattered industrial clusters.

Pollution in Citarum River raises health and food security issues, as residents living along its banks use water from the river for their daily needs.

One look at the dark purple hue of the water that Nur and the whole village used to bathe and wash was enough for any layman to guess why the residents of Sukamaju were sick.

The water the village uses is taken from Citarum River, which contains waste discharged by textile factories.

In the past, the villagers built a pipe system to channel river water directly to their wells. Then, the water was clean and suitable for drinking.

Growth in the textile industry in nearby Majalaya turned the color of the river – the village’s only source of fresh water – a dark purple.

Local residents cannot afford to buy clean water. Poor education and high unemployment leaves them little choice to but to use the river’s polluted water almost for everything, from washing dishes to bathing, and from brushing their teeth to washing rice and vegetables.

However, the residents do not use river water to cook.

“This village still has a source of clean water, but it is very limited. We only use it for cooking. Clean water is expensive. We really have to save it,” Nur said.

A few hundred meters from Nur’s village lies a vast expanse of paddy fields. Rows of textile factories are visible in the background.

Sometimes chimneys from the factories emit small puffs of dark smoke that distract the little birds flying around the paddy field.

When the Post visited Sukamaju in mid-August, the rice field was almost ready for harvest.

To approach the farmers were working at the far end of the field, a visitor had to walk along a dike that ran next to the paddy and bordered the factories.

Walking closer to the factories, various colors could be seen in the water flowing in the irrigation gutter.

Dark greens, blues and reds came out of the pipes and went straight to the gutter.

One of the farmers working the field that day was Mien. The 42-year-old said that the farmers used waste water from the factories to irrigate their crops.

The other farmers fell silent when she spoke. “Waste water is good for the crops. It’s like fertilizer,” she said.

Mien’s husband works for one of the factories.

The farmers’ yields currently ranged from six to eight quintals for a 100 square meter paddy field, Mein said, down from 8 to ten quintals that the land previously produced.

“This is better than the bad crop we had four years ago. At that time, we could only get two quintals,” she said.

“Maybe since it’s like fertilizer, if we use too much [waste water] , the results wont be good.”

While Mien may be under pressure to say positive words about the factories’ polluted water, she can not fight the facts that such water does harms to the crop.