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ANGERANG: Hundreds of students from 25 elementary schools across Tangerang municipality have released recently-hatched fish into the Cipondoh lake to observe World Wetland Day, which fell on Feb. 2.

Deputy mayor Arief R Wismansyah, who presided over the event on Thursday, hoped that the release could help maintain the lake’s ecosystem.

“We have to sustain its function as a water catchment area for the municipality,” he said.

Affandi Permana, the head of the municipal’s Environmental Management Body who also attended the release, said that domestic waste from housing complexes had polluted the lake. “From a scale index of 1 to 5, the pollution has reached 3. It means that the pollution level is high,” he said, adding that the agency warned households not to dump waste into the lake. A 2003 ministerial decree stipulates that domestic waste from housing complexes must be filtered before disposed of into waterways.