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View all search resultsGovt to go ahead with road projects near mudflow
The government is determined to proceed with its plan to develop a railway, a highway and arterial roads to replace the ones damaged by the mudflow in Porong, Sidoarjo, as their relocation sites are, so far, considered safe from possible land subsidence
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T
he government is determined to proceed with its plan to develop a railway, a highway and arterial roads to replace the ones damaged by the mudflow in Porong, Sidoarjo, as their relocation sites are, so far, considered safe from possible land subsidence.
Sidoarjo Mudflow Handling Agency (BPLS) deputy operations manager Soffian Hadi said the government would start developing the three projects next year at locations only five kilometers away from a new source of spewing mud in Porong.
"We decide to move on because there is no warning from geologists regarding the danger of land subsidence following the new mud flows on Aug. 5," Soffian told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
He said the government had 70 percent finished the land acquisition process, had made 60 percent of the payments, and the rest would be completed before the end of the year. BPLS public relations division head Ahmad Zulkarnaen said this made it difficult for the government to cancel the projects. "Cancellation would mean a financial loss for the government," he said.
The new infrastructure will go through the two regencies of Sidoarjo and Pasuruan. The arterial road, built to replace the Porong highway, would be 7.1 kilometers long. The combined toll road and railway, 10.1 kilometers long and 120 meters wide, would comprise of the Surabaya-Porong and Porong-Surabaya toll roads (25 meters wide each), alongside a 20-meter railway line, with two 25-meter-wide arterial roads sandwiching them.
Surono, head of the Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Center at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, said a feasibility study for the project had been done in 2008 and another was conducted recently following the emergence of the new mud flows.
Data from the BPLS stated there were eight new eruptions at the site in Pamotan subdistrict, including some in a rice field area only 100 meters away from the infrastructure relocation site.
Surono said the survey result had shown the Porong land subsidence pattern was not the same and was linear, meaning the new eruptions would not automatically be followed by land subsidence. Some new mud flows just disappeared and did not affect land movement.
"We recommend the BPLS control the mudflow and do not just build higher dams in which to dump the mud, as this could lead to land subsidence," Surono said.
Geologist Andang Bachtiar, however, warned of the possibility of more land subsidence around Porong, which could create a volcano-like crater.
