West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil faces an enormous challenge in the Citarum River. After it was labeled “the most polluted river in the world”, President Joko Widodo not only promised to clean it up but made the seemingly impossible promise of making its water drinkable by 2025.
But Ridwan, the former mayor of Bandung and a trained architect, says he has a multi-pronged plan to make that promise a reality, starting with specialized machinery to dredge the river of its enormous amounts of trash designed by PT Pindad, a company better known for manufacturing weapons.
“We are preparing and making plans, one of which is the creation of a garbage dredging machine by Pindad,” Ridwan said in a provincial government press release picked up by Antara.
The West Java governor said the dredging machinery was just the first part of a comprehensive clean-up plan and a short-term solution to normalizing the Citarum. He said his province’s medium-term plan was to introduce better systems for preventing and dealing with waste that goes into the river.
In the long term, Ridwan said the government wanted to move industrial zones and businesses from the area around the Citarum to other areas.
He also noted that the clean-up plan would not focus solely on the Citarum but other waterways as will such as the Malang River in Bekasi.
Around 30 million people rely on the polluted waters from the Citarum for irrigation, washing and even drinking — including around 80 percent of residents in Jakarta.
At nearly 300-kilometers long, the river is also a key source for hydroelectric power for Java and Bali.
The World Bank declared it the most-polluted river in the world a decade ago, a description widely picked up by media and environmentalists. Waste levels can vary depending on how pollution is measured and the time of the year. But the Citarum is dangerous by almost any standard.
Previous research has shown it has alarming levels of toxic chemicals — including 1,000 times more lead than the US standard for safe drinking water. It regularly appears on most-polluted lists alongside India’s Ganges river, the Mississippi river in the United States and China’s Yellow river.
With additional reporting by AFP
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