Pollution flows freely in Indonesia's rivers

By Jack Hewson, 21 Nov 2013

“Industry is using [the Citarum River] as a kind of testing ground for industrial chemicals.”
- Ahmad Ashov, Greenpeace campaigner

Bandung, Indonesia - Ibu Entin can remember when children played in the Citarum River.
Growing up in the village of Majalaya, West Java, she was able to wash her clothes and bathe her
younger sister in the water. But much has changed since her family moved here in 1973. The grey,
plastic-strewn liquid that oozes past her community is now a drab reflection of her childhood
memories.
For the past four decades, Indonesia's lax pollution controls have allowed industries to discharge
toxic waste into the Citarum with near impunity. West Java's inadequate waste-disposal
infrastructure has made the river the de facto dumpsite for its residents. Huge volumes of rubbish
float through its murky waters and accumulate in stinking piles along its banks. Poor sanitation
means human waste flows into the river untreated, along with farm slurry and pesticides.
Today, the Citarum and its surroundings are a wasteland.
Earlier this month, two environmental NGOs, Green Cross Switzerland and the Blacksmith
Institute, named the river one of the world's top ten most polluted sites, next to Chernobyl in
Ukraine and the Niger Delta in Nigeria.
In 2009, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) announced a $500m loan to rehabilitate the Citarum,
but four years later it has yet to invest any of that money in water rehabilitation.
"It's a shame I can't offer you a drink," Entin says, sitting with her five-year-old granddaughter
outside her home.
Since the 1970s more than 800 textile factories have set up in and around Majalaya, earning it the
moniker "Dollar City". Entin recalls the opening of the first dyeing factory, around the time she
got married in 1976, as the time when the river noticeably started to change. "The water would
go green, black, yellow, brown. When it turned white it smelt especially bad," she says.
No one bathes in the river anymore, but Entin and her family must still use it to shower, clean
their dishes and brush their teeth. They have no other option.
They are lucky that they can get drinking water from a neighbour's well. Fifteen million people
remain directly reliant on the Citarum for drinking and bathing water.
Sitting next to Entin, her granddaughter sporadically scratches her forearms. Skin irritation is
widespread in Majalaya, itching is experienced by most of those who use the water to wash, and
many suffer chronic dermatitis. Respiratory problems are also very common.
"I never feel clean," Entin says. "I have a reddish mark on my skin, all of my body feels itchy and I
struggle to sleep at night. It's the same for my family. All of the people who live here have skin
problems, from top to bottom … Now, if the water colour changes quickly, the itching gets
worse. I'm angry, but I don't know who to get angry at. We talk to the community leaders, and
they went to the factories already, but they don't respond. The only thing that matters to them is
to keep the business running, not the villagers' lives."
Culture of impunity
Members of the Elingan Community Group, which represents the interests of Majalaya's
residents, claim to have been threatened for speaking out. Elingan leader Deny Riswandani says
he has received so many threats that he has been forced to move to another area and must
constantly change his phone number.
As one of the most important economic interests in the country, textile manufacturers are
powerful political players. In 2010, textiles accounted for 8.9 percent of the country's total
exports, and textiles, leather products and footwear contributed 9 percent to Indonesia's GDP. An
estimated 11 percent of the total industrial labour force - 1.3 million people as of 2011 - works in
the industry.
The products of many multinational clothing brands are manufactured here, with 61 percent of
garments being shipped to foreign markets. The impact of these hard economic facts on the
government's attitude to regulation is difficult to determine. What is certain, however, is how
utterly regulation has failed.
To date, the Citarum has not met Indonesian water quality standards since they were established
in 1989.
Meanwhile, the river supplies 80 percent of Jakarta's surface water and it irrigates five percent of
the country's rice farms. "Industry is using [the Citarum River] as a kind of testing ground for
industrial chemicals," says Ahmad Ashov, a toxic campaigner for Greenpeace in Southeast
Asia. According to Ahmad, the government only regulates 264 chemicals, out of the 100,000 that
are used in the global textile industry - and to which 1,500 are added every year.
This effectively allows companies to discharge thousands of hazardous chemicals without fear of
prosecution.
Even if a factory is discharging one of the 45 industrial chemicals banned under Indonesian law,
Ahmad says it is an open secret that inspectors can be paid to look the other way. Thus far, only
14 companies have ever received administrative or criminal sanctions for contamination of the
Citarum.
A Greenpeace investigation into PT Gistex Textiles Division - whose parent company PT Gistex
Group supplies Gap, H&M and Adidas - found that their effluent contained an array of hazardous
chemicals, despite having been deemed legally compliant, from 2010-11, with the government's
Public Disclosure of Industrial Pollution programme (PROPER).
According to Greenpeace's report, tests carried out in May 2012 at the factory, located in Cimahi,
40km from Majalaya, found wastewater from one of the facility's outflow pipes to be pH14 - the
highest possible level of alkalinity, capable of burning human flesh.
"During the tests I got a couple of tiny splashes on my face," Ahmad says. "It hurt and then was
itchy for about a week."
At the facility's main outflow pipe they detected nonylphenol, a well-known persistent
environmental contaminant with hormone-disrupting properties, together with nonylphenol
ethoxylates, tributyl phosphate and high levels of dissolved antimony.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/11/pollution-flows-freely-indonesia-rivers-
2013112013166643513.html