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South Tangerang landfill wall collapses, spilling 100 tons of waste into Cisadane River
Yepi Suherman, the South Tangerang environmental agency secretary, confirmed that the walls had collapsed at around 4.30 a.m on Friday.
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The support walls of the Cipeucang landfill in Serpong, South Tangerang, Banten, collapsed on Friday morning, spilling around 100 metric tons of waste into the Cisadane River.
(Warta Kota/Rizki Amana)
T
he support walls of the Cipeucang landfill in Serpong, South Tangerang, Banten, collapsed on Friday morning, spilling around 100 metric tons of waste into the Cisadane River.
Yepi Suherman, the South Tangerang environmental agency secretary, confirmed that the walls had collapsed at around 4.30 a.m.
“Around 100 tons [ of waste] is blocking two-thirds of the river,” he told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
He added that the agency had coordinated with the Public Works and Public Housing Ministry’s joint Ciliwung-Cisadane Flood Control Office to clean up the spilled waste and restore the blocked water flow.
The office sent a team on Friday night and the river is currently being dredged.
“Around 10 percent of the waste has been lifted from the river [as of Saturday morning],” Yepi said.
He said that heavy rainfall in the last few days caused the waste to absorb water and expand. The increasing weight of the waste then caused the landfill walls to collapse.
He went on to say that the agency would ask the landfill’s contractor to repair the walls immediately.
"They were built less than six months ago, so [the contractor] should take responsibility," he said
Read also: Skyscraper of waste: Greater Jakarta drowning in mountains of trash
Cipeucang is South Tangerang’s only public landfill and receives approximately 300 tons of waste every day. The landfill is on the brink of being overloaded with mounds of trash as high as 16 meters tall.
The South Tangerang administration has announced its intention to close the facility and build a waste-to-energy plant instead. The administration has rented a section of the Nambo landfill in adjacent Bogor city, West Java, to dump its garbage.
The facility will be able to produce up to 15-megawatt hours of electricity from a supply of 1,000 tons of waste per day. Construction is set to begin later this year and take two years to complete.
