Dutch accused of dumping chemicals in Jakarta

RNW, 29 January 2012

Indonesia's Finance Minister Agus Martowardojo has accused the Netherlands and the United Kingdom of violating the Basel Convention against the dumping of chemical waste.

The minister told reporters on Saturday that customs had impounded 113 containers of hazardous and toxic waste at the port of Tanjung Priok in Jakarta, according to a report in the Jakarta Post.

The Dutch and British governments "should have reported the shipments to Indonesia because they contained hazardous and toxic waste" under the terms of the Basel agreement, which has been in force since 1992. The 89 British and 24 Dutch containers contained mainly scrap metal contaminated with poisonous chemicals.

The Jakarta government has said it will notify the British and Dutch embassies of the find, demanding an explanation for the incompleteness of the shipload's documents. The owner of the PT HHS company which attempted to import the scrap metal into Indonesia could face a 15-year jail sentence if found guilty, Environment Minister Balthasar Kombuaya said.

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The customs office foiled the attempted smuggling of 28,200 kilograms
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Full Steam Ahead as PLN Targets Geothermal Power

Jakarta Globe, Ririn Radiawati Kusuma,  January 06, 2012

An employee walking along a thermal pipe at the Kamojang geothermal
power plant near Garut, West Java, on March 18. State utility provider
 Perusahaan Listrik Negara is targeting an additional 135 megawatts of
electricity from three new geothermal plants. (Reuters Photo/Beawiharta)

               

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State-owned power producer Perusaahan Listrik Negara expects to generate an additional 135 megawatts of electricity from its three geothermal power plants that are set to go online this year as part of its plans to boost capacity across the nation.

Muhammad Sofyan, director of renewable energy at the state utility provider known as PLN, said on Friday that it expected to operate three new geothermal power plants this year. They include the 110 megawatt Ulubelu plant in Lampung, Sumatra; a 20 MW plant in Lahendong, North Sulawesi; and a 5 MW plant in Manggarai, West Flores.

Sofyan said the Ulubelu plant was expected to start operating by October. Pertamina Geothermal Energy will provide steam for the plant at a cost of 4.3 cents per kilowatt hour, he said.

PGE is a unit of state-owned oil and gas company Pertamina, and it provides steam at other PLN facilities in the country.

The Lahendong plant will similarly work with PGE, Sofyan said, and it should begin operating in February.

Sofyan said the Ulumbu plant would also become operational in February. PLN, he said, would provide the steam for the Ulumbu geothermal plant.

PLN is responsible for improving access to electricity and reducing power outages that are common in many parts of Indonesia.

The country’s electrification rate, which indicates what percentage of households have access to power, is forecast to increase to 75 percent this year from 71 percent last year, PLN said.

PLN is working to provide 20 MW of power from renewable energy sources on remote islands such as Mentawai, Riau and Bangka-Belitung.

Indonesia is an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, and many volcanoes stretch across major islands such as Sumatra and Java along a range that makes it desirable to tap these geothermal sources for the production of electricity.

Renewable energy also includes production of electricity from water, wind and solar.

Indonesia, a nation of 240 million people, had power-generation capacity at as much as 28,462 MW as of the end of last year, according to PLN data.

Coal-powered plants account for around 42.2 percent of that capacity, with diesel-fired plants 23.7 percent, gas 22 percent, hydropower plants 6.7 percent and geothermal and other renewable energy at 5.4 percent.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered the Energy Ministry to boost the country’s electricity capacity by implementing a 20,000 MW fast-track program. The program aims to boost the nation’s electrification rate to 80.24 percent by 2014.

Late last month, Yudhoyono inaugurated three coal-fired plants and broke ground on the upgrade of an oil refinery, facilities that are intended to help the country cope with rapidly rising demand for fuel and electricity.

Yudhoyono launched three power plants, two in Banten province and one in Central Java, via teleconference. The three plants have a total production capacity of 1,600 MW and are expected to consume 6.5 million tons of coal annually.

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Suspects Named in Indonesian Bridge Collapse Disaster

Jakarta Globe, Tunggadewa Mattangkilang & Farouk Arnaz, January 02, 2012

At least 18 were killed and 39 others injured when the the Mahakam II
Bridge in East Kalimantan collapsed. (Agency Photo)   

            

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"Bambang also said the police were also looking into the possibility of corruption being a factor in the shoddy construction of the bridges." Corruption in Indonesia? Surely that is not possible

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The police have named three suspects in the case of the collapse of a 10-year-old suspension bridge in East Kalimantan in November, an officer said on Sunday.

Comr. Gen. Sutarman, the National Police chief of detectives, said the three suspects had yet to be detained.

“Based on the results of the investigation and the evidence gathered, three people have been named as suspects by the East Kalimantan Police,” Sutarman said.

He identified them as Y.S., an official of the Kutai Kartanegara district public work office; S.T., a technical executor of the project; and MSF from Bukaka Tehnik Utama, the company in charge of the bridge’s maintenance and repairs.

He said the three suspects would be summoned for questioning at East Kalimantan police headquarters on suspicion of having violated two articles of the Penal Code pertaining to negligence leading to the loss of life.

At least 24 people died when the Rp 104 billion ($11.4 million) Mahakam II bridge, inaugurated in 2001, collapsed on Nov. 26. A dozen other people are still missing and feared dead.

Meanwhile, East Kalimantan Police chief Insp. Gen. Bambang Widaryatmo said that the suspects may be arrested after their questioning.

“We will summon them immediately and detain them,” Bambang said.

He added that the three suspects were named after the questioning of 57 witnesses, including five expert witnesses from five universities.

He said the investigation had been slow because some of the maintenance workers were among the victims and their equipment had sunk to the bottom of the Mahakam River when the bridge collapsed.

“We are also constrained because the experts who have been asked to provide explanations in relation to the collapse of the bridge are still awaiting the results of the analysis of several teams deployed from the concerned ministries to study the incident,” he said.

Bambang also said the police were also looking into the possibility of corruption being a factor in the shoddy construction of the bridges by studying all available documents, including the contract for the construction, signed in 1995.

“We are currently investigating suspicions of corruption in the bridge’s construction. For example, cables that should have been 100 centimeters long, were only 10 centimeters long,” Bambang said.

Meanwhile, Sri Wahyuningsih, a spokeswoman for the Kutai Kartanegara district, said that district authorities were continuing efforts to evacuate the victims and vehicles still believed to be at the bottom of the Mahakam River. The authorities will also lift the structure, a task expected to be complete by Feb. 17.

“There were three companies making offers and presentations [for the clearance contract], but we have yet to choose a winner,” she said.

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Indonesian Garbage Project Helps to Save the Climate

Jakarta Globe, Christiane Oelrich, January 01, 2012

A man perches on a makeshift raft on a river covered with trash as he
 searches for materials to recycle, north of Indonesia's capital, Jakarta
 in this file photo. Residents in Tangerang are taking trash collection into
their own hands. (Reuters Photo/Supri) 

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Tangerang. Crouched and concentrated, August and Karma rip open knotted plastic bags at the foot of a big pile of rubbish.

Yoghurt cups, paper packaging, plastic, pineapple rinds, cabbage leaves, chicken bones and the like fall out. The young Indonesian men begin sorting. Organic material goes to one side, and bottles, plastic and paper to the other.

“A super job,” remarks Karma, 23. “Finally, reliable work.” The two sort their rubbish and that of their neighbors, too. For the past year, the 325 families in Griya Serpong — a working class housing area of Tangerang, a city some 40 kilometers south-west of Jakarta — have been disposing of their garbage themselves.

Municipal garbage collection was never reliable, and the residents used to dump their refuse in a vacant field — a paradise for rats, flies, mosquitoes and snakes.

Everything is different now. The roofed garbage sorting facility is a source of local pride.

“It’s got a lot cleaner here,” notes Ulil Albab, the project’s honorary chairman.

“Nobody wanted to have anything to do with rubbish before. Now we bring school kids here and show them how to compost,” Karma says.

Residents built the facility with the help of BEST, a local non-governmental organization focusing on urban poverty and community development, and BORDA (Bremen Overseas Research and Development Association), a German non-profit organization that aims to improve the living conditions of disadvantaged communities and to keep the environment intact.

At a monthly cost per family of 12,000 Indonesian rupiahs, or a little over 1 dollar, August and Karma sweep through the alleyways of Griya Serpong with their moped and trailer every day collecting garbage — 400 kilograms of it.

They compost all organic refuse at the sorting facility. It is then sold along with the plastic, glass and paper.

Agathe, 35, has made a business out of rubbish. She collects discarded detergent and noodle bags. She and her girlfriends fashion colorful handbags and wallets from them.

When everything of value has been separated out of the housing area’s refuse, no more than 30 percent remains. It is taken to a tip.

BEST Director Hamzah Harun Al Rasyid is pleased. “It’s a win-win situation,” he says. “The housing area is cleaner, there are new jobs, and there is considerably less rubbish, so we’re reducing methane emissions from the garbage tips.”

Karma and August constantly turn over the compost pile, which aerates it. This helps prevent the formation of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that makes garbage tips a big contributor to global warming.

As Indonesia’s population grows rapidly, so do the piles of garbage that are produced by the country’s more than 240 million inhabitants.

While recycling is a booming industry — for example in Germany, where it generates some 67 billion dollars in revenues annually — almost all of the Indonesian garbage is incinerated or dumped in open tips.

About 1.8 million tons of garbage is likely to be produced daily worldwide by 2025, according to BORDA. In Indonesia, 62 percent of the refuse is organic and could be composted. But there is no large-scale sorting of refuse.

Facilities like the one in Griya Serpong are catching on. The twenty-first one is to be inaugurated in the near future, and many other communities are clamoring for their own.

“We estimate that each facility like this reduces methane by 132 tons a year,” said Jati Kusumowati, who works at the BORDA office in the city of Yogyakarta. “We think they ought to be promoted internationally as well.” One way to do this might be via the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) set out in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which allows industrialized countries to meet their emission--reduction or limitation commitments in part by paying for emission cuts in developing countries.

A one-ton reduction in methane would earn about 13 to 16 dollars, according to Kusumowati.

But small projects such as the one in Griya Serpong would not clear the technical and bureaucratic hurdles necessary for them to be officially recognized. BORDA is now trying to get the requirements for small projects loosened.

DPA

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