Once completed, the incinerators will burn garbage and produce electricity amid efforts for the city administration to sort persistent waste issues and decrease reliance on Jakarta’s sole final disposal site in Bantar Gebang, in neighboring satellite city Bekasi, West Java. The plan has long been under scrutiny by environmentalists, who have warned of possible health hazards, including toxic fumes released by the facility.

City-owned developer PT Jakarta Propertindo (Jakpro) and Finnish energy company Fortum formed joint venture PT Jakarta Solusi Lestari (JSL) to carry out the construction and operation of the WTE incinerator called the intermediate treatment facility (ITF) in Sunter.

The facility will be handed over to the Jakarta administration after 25 years.

Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan officiated the start of construction in a groundbreaking ceremony in December 2018. However, sluggish progress ensued as after more than a year, construction had not yet started as the city administration was still dealing with paperwork to make way for the project.

Fortum's vice president of corporate communications, Izabela van den Bossche, brushed off the concerns, explaining that the residue from the incinerator would be properly handled in cooperation with third parties.

The plant in Sunter will reportedly use high-end thermal treatment technology called grate fired incineration, which more than 1,000 plants have used worldwide, she said.

The Sunter facility is Fortum's first project outside Europe.

Van den Boosche explained that waste collected by the environment agency would be brought in compactor trucks and dropped in a waste bunker that could contain up to 7,000 tons of waste.

The waste will then proceed in the incinerator that will have a capacity of 2,200 tons per day. The waste will be burned at a temperature of about 1,000 degrees Celsius.

The incinerator will be able to decrease waste volume to 15 percent compared to the original volume. The combustion will generate slag that could reused as construction material, Van den Bossche said.

Meanwhile, fumes generated from the combustion will be treated with a flue gas treatment plant to make sure the amount of pollutants emitted from the incineration complies with the Euro 5 standard.

Fly ash or residue of the flue gas treatment will approximately take about 5 percent from the waste mass amount.

The fly ash is hazardous due to contact with chemicals used during the treatment.

“PT JSL is supposed to start selecting a partner for the handling of fly ash immediately after the kick-off of the project,” Van den Boosche told The Jakarta Post during a recent media visit.

The company aims to select a partner capable of meeting the strict requirements in terms of technical matters, sustainability and credit worthiness.

Jakpro’s ITF Sunter project director, Aditya Bakti Laksana, said the company would guarantee that the fly ash would be handled by a certified company that had experience in handling hazardous waste.

The closed facility would not impact surrounding residents as noise and potential odors could be minimized, he added.

Van den Bossche further said that the she acknowledged concerns from environmentalists but all measures needed to be taken to reduce the amount of waste plaguing the city. Especially, she added, Bantar Gebang landfill would reach its full capacity within a few years.

“Now the problem is real and we cannot wait that long,” she said.

Still, questions linger about whether Jakarta has the competence to handle the hazardous waste from the combustion in the facility, Fajri Fadillah from the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL) said while urging the city administration to think twice about the project.

He doubted transparency in the fly ash handling, citing that there had not been any reliable records of the management of such waste from coal-fired power plants.

Fajri added that thermal technology should be the very last option and that the selection of much lower risk methods to handle waste should be prioritized, such as optimizing biological methods and strictly transforming the existing dumpsite into a proper sanitary landfill.

Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) Jakarta head Tubagus Soleh echoed similar sentiments, saying the administration should focus on evaluating its efforts to encourage waste reduction from the sources.

“The administration insisting on building an ITF is just the same as transferring the responsibility of waste producers,” he told the Post on Thursday.

As for the lack of progress in the construction of the project, Van den Bossche said JSL and relevant stakeholders were in negotiations to settle several aspects, considering ITF Sunter would be the first WTE plant in the
country.

“The issue is extremely complex because it is not only about constructing the plant but how to get a [business] guarantee for 25 years," she said. “Such a process always occurs for the first thing in a country. This is something that we cannot speed up.”

Despite the issue, the administration is moving forward with other ITF projects.

Jakpro has held a preliminary sounding market to attract potential investors for another three ITF projects to be built in East Jakarta, West Jakarta and South Jakarta.

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