Indonesian Woman Wins ‘Asia’s Nobel Prize’ for Helping Poor

Jakarta Globe, July 28, 2011

Indonesian social worker Tri Mumpuni, left, pictured at the White House
 Summit on Entrepreneurship in Washington in 2010. Tri is among the
 winners of Asia’s prestigious Magsaysay award this year for giving green
technologies to the poor, organizers said on Wednesday. (EPA Photo)

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Manila. Indonesian social worker Tri Mumpuni is among the winners of Asia’s prestigious Magsaysay award this year for giving green technologies to the poor, organizers said on Wednesday.

Award foundation president Carmencita Abella said Tri, along with an Indian engineer and a Philippine charity group, had helped harness the technologies to empower their countrymen and worked to create waves of progressive change across Asia.

Each year six people or organizations are named joint winners of the Magsaysay award.

This year the other winners were a man who set up an Islamic school for girls in Indonesia, a lender to India’s poorest, and a man working to restore democracy in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge murdered his father.

“Working on critical issues ... they are showing how commitment, competence, and collaborative leadership can truly transform individual lives and galvanize community action,” Abella said.

The award, often described as Asia’s Nobel Prize, is named after a famous Philippine president who died in a 1957 plane crash.

It aims to honor people who address issues of human development in Asia with courage and creativity.

Tri Mumpuni, 46, was recognized after her IBEKA foundation built 60 small power plants harnessing the energy of water stored in dams to bring electricity to half a million people, the awards foundation said.

She was once kidnapped with her husband by former separatist rebels in Aceh province while pursuing her nongovernmental group’s project to bring electricity to rural Indonesia.

Another winner was US-trained Indian engineer Harish Hande, 44, for bringing solar lights to a country where half of all households have no electricity, the awards foundation said.

His Solar Electric Light Co.-India has tapped the sun’s energy to light up 120,000 households and is now one of the country’s largest solar technology providers.

In the Philippines, Dutch marine engineer Auke Idzenga’s Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation won for using an ancient, near-forgotten technology, the ram pump, to help impoverished communities on Negros island.

Re-engineered for upland farms, the pump gave the communities clean, cheap water for household use and for raising livestock, fish, and small farms, it said.

A ram pump, which does not need an external power source, harnesses the force of a large body of moving water to pump a small amount of water uphill.

The winners are to receive their awards in Manila on August 31.

Agence France-Presse

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(Photo Auke Idzenga)

Solar lanterns saving lives, lighting up Kenya

CNN News, by Emily Wither for CNN, July 15, 2011

It’s estimated that around a third Kenyans rely on kerosene lamps for
their lighting needs, but Kenyan company Solanterns is on a mission to
replace one million kerosene lanterns with solar-powered ones.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Around 75% of Kenyans rely on kerosene lamps for their lighting needs
• The smoke from kerosene lamps can lead to the development of respiratory illnesses
• Solanterns is aiming to replace one million kerosene lanterns with solar-powered ones
• The company says that each lantern will reduce CO2 emissions by 135 kilograms

(CNN) -- Every evening thousands of children in Kenya sit down and do their homework by kerosene-powered light.

However, the soot emitted from the burning lamps is not only an environmental hazard but the toxic fumes could be causing children serious harm and putting them at risk of respiratory illnesses.

Alice Njeri lives with her two sisters and their children in a suburb of Nairobi called Kayole. She says the indoor pollution can be difficult to live with.

"The Kerosene lamp emits smoke and gives my children eye problems and the smoke can bring them to tears," she said.

The United Nations Environmental Program says that in rural Kenya more women die of smoke-related illnesses than they do of malaria and tuberculosis. This smoke is from cooking and lighting fuels.

The inflammatory agents in kerosene lamps have been linked with everything from cancer to behavioral deficits. The lamps are also a safety risk as they can be easily knocked over and start fires in the home.

According to the CIA World Fact Book only a quarter of households in Kenya have electricity. It's estimated that around a third of Kenyans rely on kerosene lanterns for their lighting needs.

RELATED TOPICS

• Kenya
• Nairobi
• Global Climate Change

One company is on a mission to change this and is aiming to replace one million kerosene lanterns with solar-powered ones.

It's an ambitious project but one that the team feel can really make a difference to people living in rural Kenya who do not have access to electricity.

"The solar lights have a huge impact on health, education, productivity and overall improve the quality of people's lives," said Joseph Nganga from Solanterns, an initiative of Renewable Energy Ventures.

Its lanterns cost around $25 and are powered via a solar panel, which charges a lithium ion battery. Solanterns says it has reached over 1,500 households.

This was partly helped by USAID which bought and distributed 500 lanterns around Nairobi.

But the team still has a long way to go if it is to achieve its goal.

"We hope to expand access to solar lanterns through a wider product offering to meet different consumer needs and budgets," Nganga said.

"Critical to achieving our target of replacing one million kerosene lanterns with one million solar lanterns is consumer awareness," he added.

The company says that each lantern will reduce CO2 emissions by 135 kilograms and save 52 liters of kerosene over its lifetime.

This means that as well as the environmental benefits using solar lamps will save families money on fuel.

The organization estimates that over a three-year period families will save $140 in lighting costs, making solar lamps cheaper than kerosene lamps in the long-run.

Leah also lives in Kayole and has a son in his last year at primary school. She said: "With the way life is right now and high fuel prices I couldn't always manage to buy kerosene.

"Sometimes my child has homework that he couldn't do so the lantern has really helped me."

Solar lighting is also being credited with better grades for school children. According to Solantern's research, over half of children living in households with a solar lantern were able to study an extra two hours a night.

"My child's performance is different now because he could not do homework and study at night with the kerosene lamp," Leah added. "He performs much better now."

As well as using her solar lamp in the home, Njeri says that she uses it on her market stall in the evening. Its makers say it can lead to better sales at fruit and vegetable stands as produce is no longer spoiled by fumes from kerosene lamps.

"My kids tell me not to return to the kerosene lantern but to instead bury it," Njeri said.

Dutch to help build dikes in Indonesia

RNW, 6 July 2011

The Netherlands is to help with plans for a 36-kilometer dike around the Indonesian coastal city of Jakarta to protect the city from flooding.

Deputy Foreign Minister Ben Knapen has set aside 4 million euros in development aid for the project and two Dutch experts will be sent to help develop the plans. The dike will be build two kilometres into the sea so that land can be reclaimed for urban development.

“This investment in a master plan to protect Jakarta from the sea is a good example of the new development policy in which Dutch knowledge and skills can made a difference,” says Deputy Minister Knapen.

Jakarta is regularly hit by flooding. In 2007 large parts of the city were inundated by several meters of water. At least 18 people drowned and around 300,000 people become homeless. The economic damage was huge; the airport had to be closed as a result. Pumps have been installed as a short term solution and the road to the airport has been raised.

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Energy-efficient stoves clear Pakistan’s air

RNW, 24 June 2011, by Johan van Slooten

(Photo by AKPBS)

Families in northern Pakistan’s Hindu Kush mountains – subjected to long, harsh winters – have found a better way to heat their homes and cook their meals: A new, simple but efficient cooking stove. It rids the homes of deadly fumes, reduces respiratory illness and even cuts deforestation.

It wasn't long ago that the people in the region were heating their homes with simple wood fires, filling the homes with almost permanent clouds of smoke.

“Later they began to use simple stoves, but they weren’t very efficient either,” says Hadi Hosseini of Pakistan’s Aga Khan Planning and Building Service (AKPBS), a division of the Aga Khan Development Network which aims to improve the lives of people in rural Pakistan.

Illnesses

“You simply couldn’t see across the room because of the smoke. People just didn’t know how to channel the smoke out. This lead to many respiratory illnesses among villagers, especially children, including cancer and asthma. Something had to be done.”

After seeing similar situations in Nepal, the AKPBS designed a new cooking stove. It contains two main elements – one to cook meals on and one to heat the room. It can also be connected to a water tank to heat and cook water faster than was previously possible.

Cold winters

“Women used to go down to the rivers to do their laundry,” says AKPBS’s Qayum Ali Shah, who comes from the region. “Especially during the cold winters, this was particularly dangerous, as they had to bring their young children with them."

"You can imagine what it was like to do your laundry in ice cold circumstances with a baby in tow. The women don’t have to do that anymore. They can now simply wash their clothes at home, using the heated water.”

The improvements also included a heat-efficient chimney and an opening in the roof which can be opened or closed to control airflow.

Traditions

While the design and the benefits of the cooking stove seem obvious, it took AKPBS a while to convince the people to actually use it. “This is a very traditional population,” says Mr Hosseini. “Traditions, even domestic ones, go back centuries. To change them, you have to convince people that the new techniques will improve their lives.”

Mr Hosseini and Mr Shah achieved that by simply travelling around the region, demonstrating the stoves' benefits.

“We’ve engaged the women, we’re working with local entrepreneurs, and we’ve been at roadshows. And the people that we managed to convince have subsequently come along with us to tell others. It’s been a word of mouth promotion.”

Benefits

The benefits of the project go beyond the domestic improvements in people’s homes, Mr Hosseini notes.

“People use wood as fuel. Communities were gathering wood three to four times a week, which lead to massive deforestation in the region, which ultimately leads to a high risk of flooding. Using our stove, people have reduced their fuel wood consumption by 50 to 60 percent. So this simple stove is helping to improve their lives AND the environment.”

It’s this element that was noticed by the prestigious Ashden Awards in the UK, which gives an annual award to small scale sustainable energy projects. The AKPBS received an award earlier this month for improving homes and cutting the use of wood for fuel.

Recognition

“It’s good to get this recognition,” says Mr Hosseini. “We go in with a multi-input program: health, education, rural development. The people there are getting a whole package of improvements. That's not delivered by many stand-alone organizations who only focus on one thing. I think that’s our benefit.”

“We’re offering simple and effective solutions which could also be used elsewhere, even in Western homes. Why not take a step back in our electronic and manufactured approach of cooking? People everywhere could learn a lot from these things.”

'Super sand' to help clean up dirty drinking water

BBC News, 24 June 2011

The technology could help improve access to clean water in
developing countries

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Contaminated water can be cleaned much more effectively using a novel, cheap material, say researchers.

Dubbed "super sand", it could become a low-cost way to purify water in the developing world.

The technology involves coating grains of sand in an oxide of a widely available material called graphite - commonly used as lead in pencils.

The team describes the work in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials and Interfaces.

In many countries around the world, access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities is still limited.

The World Health Organization states that "just 60% of the population in Sub-Saharan African and 50% of the population in Oceania [islands in the tropical Pacific Ocean] use improved sources of drinking-water."

The graphite-coated sand grains might be a solution - especially as people have already used sand to purify water since ancient times.

Coating the sand

But with ordinary sand, filtering techniques can be tricky.

Dr Wei Gao from Rice university in Texas, US, told BBC News that regular coarse sand was a lot less effective than fine sand when water was contaminated with pathogens, organic contaminants and heavy metal ions.

While fine sand is slightly better, water drains through it very slowly.

"Our product combines coarse sand with functional carbon material that could offer higher retention for those pollutants, and at the same time gives good throughput," explained Dr Gao.

She said that the technique the team has developed to make the sand involves dispersing graphite oxide into water and mixing it with regular sand.

"We then heat the whole mixture up to 105C for a couple of hours to evaporate the water, and use the final product - 'coated sand' - to purify polluted water."

Cost-efficient 

"Super sand" is made using regular sand - and
it could become a low-cost way to purify water

The lead scientist of the study, Professor Pulickel Ajayan, said it was possible to modify the graphite oxide in order to make it more selective and sensitive to certain pollutants - such as organic contaminants or specific metals in dirty water.

Another team member, Dr Mainak Majumder from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said it had another advantage - it was cheap.

"This material demonstrates comparable performance to some commercially available activated carbon materials," he said.

"But given that this can be synthesized using room temperature processes and also from cheap graphite sources, it is likely to be cost-efficient."

He pointed out that in Australia many mining companies extract graphite and they produce a lot of graphite-rich waste.

"This waste can be harnessed for water purification," he said.

30% of Indonesians Do Not Use Toilets: First Lady

Jakarta Globe, June 24, 2011

First Lady Ani Yudhoyono on Friday said that she was very concerned with the low levels of sanitation in Indonesia, citing a survey that states that 30 percent of Indonesian people still do not use toilets to defecate.

“Currently, 30 percent of our people are still doing BAB [defecate] in all the wrong places because of the lack of access to toilets,” Ani said in a speech in front of the participants at 2011 Santitation Jamboree in Jakarta on Friday, as quoted by news portal Detik.com.

According to the National Statistics Bureau (BPS), Indonesia population is more than 237 million,  therefore more than 71 million people in the country still do not use toilets.

She said there were regions in Indonesia who were not providing good sanitation.

“If only all regional heads were committed [in providing good sanitation], God Willing, our lives would be more prosperous,” Ani said, adding that it was difficult to find clean water and good sanitation in the suburbs.

“In the suburbs, there are many [people] who defecate in the river,” she said.

Based on the survey, she said, 50 percent of Indonesian people still do not have access to clean water.

“The rest use risky water,” Ani said.

The government is striving to sanitation conditions by focusing on three programs, she said.

The first program is for Indonesian children to use toilets to defecate. The second, more access to clean water for people and the third, to clear water from waste.

“If the river is polluted, all people are at risk of contracting diseases,” she said.

Helping homeowners harness the sun (Google / SolarCity)

Google Blog, 6/14/11

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

Imagine sitting on your patio watching the sun’s rays pass overhead, knowing that they power your home with clean energy—at a cost that’s less that what you would have paid using just the grid. That’s what my colleague, engineer Michael Flaster, has been doing at his home in Menlo Park, Calif. since March of this year. He did it with the help of a company called SolarCity, which enables homeowners and businesses to begin using solar energy to power their homes and buildings.

Today, we’re announcing that we’ve investing $280 million to create a fund that will help SolarCity finance more solar installations across the country. This is our largest clean energy project investment to date and brings our total invested in the clean energy sector to more than $680 million. We’ve also launched a partnership to offer SolarCity services to Googlers at a discount.

In SolarCity’s innovative financing model, the company covers installation and maintenance of the system over the life of the lease. You can prepay, or pay nothing upfront after which you make monthly solar lease payments. All told, Michael will save $100 per month on his energy bills this year, and more than $16,000 over his 15 year lease, after factoring in his lease payment and lower energy bills.

We believe the world needs a wide range of clean energy options in the future, each serving different needs. We’ve already invested in several large-scale renewable energy projects, so we’re excited that this new partnership with SolarCity helps people power their homes directly with solar energy, too. We think “distributed” renewable energy (generated and used right at home) is a smart way to use solar photovoltaic (PV) technology to improve our power system since it helps avoid or alleviate distribution constraints on the traditional electricity grid.

Our investment is a quadruple-win for Google, SolarCity, its new customers and the environment. We continue to look for other renewable energy investments that make business sense and help develop and deploy cleaner sources of energy. Whether harnessing the sun on rooftops like Michael’s or in the desert sands of the Mojave, it’s all part of building a clean energy future.

Posted by Rick Needham, Director of Green Business Operations

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512 companies awarded for ‘zero accidents’

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sat, 06/04/2011

The Manpower and Transmigration Ministry has awarded 512 companies in the country for recording “zero accidents” in their operations this year.

That figure is an increase from the 287 companies that received similar awards last year.

“This indicates improved awareness among employers and workers on applying K3 [safety precautions] in their work environments,” Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar said in a press statement released on Saturday.

Applying K3, he said, helped minimize possible accidents at the workplace, most of which occurred in construction, transportation and mining sectors.

Muhaimin said K3 needed to be continually campaigned on to further reduce work accidents.

“It is part of efforts to draw investment and support national economic development,” he added.

Aru district developing sea water processing technology

Antara News, Fri, May 27 2011

Ambon, Maluku (ANTARA News) - The Aru Islands District administration in Maluku province is currently developing a technology to process sea water into clean water.

The sea water processing technology is being developed in four villages which have been facing clean water problem so far in the district, head of Aru`s public works department, Ongky Nanulaita, said here on Friday.

He said the application of such a technology has been developed since 2010 by adopting it from Maldives city of Male to ensure the availability of clean and potable l water for the local people`s consumption.

Four villages where the technology is being developed are Kujabi in Aru Tengah Timur sub-district, Marlase in Aru Utara sub-district, Benjina in Aru Tengah sub-district, and Langgarapara in Aru Tengah Selatan sub-district.

"The application of the sea water processing technology in Aru Islands District began with a comparative study in Maldives whose area`s characteristic is the same as that in Aru," Ongky said.

He said it was a new breakthrough in Aru which is mostly made up of low-lying rocky areas.

"With that technology we guarantee the availability of clean healthful water for the local community," Ongky said, adding that the district has lack of water catchment area, except the district town of Dobo.

Thus to maintain the water catchment area in Dobo, Ongky said development of settlement area there should be limited.

Asked if such a technology could also be developed at other villages in the district, Ongky said a careful evaluation was needed to decide if it was possible.

"The application of the technology in the four villages is a pilot project that has to be evaluated to find out if it can be developed as well in other villages," Ongki said.

Editor: Jafar M Sidik

Jakarta, Bandung need quake-proof buildings: Expert

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Mon, 05/16/2011

Jakarta and Bandung need regulations to standardize earthquake-proof buildings to avoid massive casualties should major tremor take place, an expert says.

“We should prepare the buildings as soon as possible so that they would not collapse once earthquake hit the two cities,” said I Wayan Sangara, a member of the Bandung Institute of Technology team tasked to map Indonesia's quake-prone regions.

Such a regulation was currently being discussed by the Public Works Ministry and National Standardization Agency, Wayan said Monday as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.

Earlier, Presidential special staff Andi Arief said Jakarta and Bandung were prone to earthquakes measuring up to 8.7 on the Richter scale, whose epicenter could be in the Sunda Strait.

“But Bandung has a higher exposure to earthquakes than Jakarta,” he added.

Both Jakarta and Bandung have the potential to experience medium-level quakes.

Data shows that most major earthquakes in Indonesia hit the coastal regions of West Sumatra and South Java, while other regions, such as Borneo, Riau Islands province and Batam experience milder quakes.

Dutch hothouses could help solve world food crisis

RNW, 2 May 2011, by Johan Huizinga

(Photo: RNW)

Dutch hothouses used to have a reputation for wasting energy. But nowadays it’s the most innovative sector in the Netherlands, producing food extremely efficiently using sustainable energy. Even the Chinese are interested.

China, like the Netherlands, does not have enough agricultural land to feed its own population. Dutch intensive greenhouse systems could help increase food production in China.

Professor of greenhouse farming at the Agricultural University of Wageningen Olaf van Kooten explains:

“Cultivation under glass is extremely efficient in its use of water and energy. In the future, we will have to feed around 15 billion people across the world, and this could be a key to the solution.”

Water

Excess warm water is stored
underground (Photo: RNW)

Stef Huisman grows tropical plants and trees for offices. He uses a closed water system. His nursery has trees standing in two to three centimetres of water. Every week, the water is filtered for sand and ultra violet rays and reused.

“That is all the water we need. The rain that falls on the roof is enough to water the plants. We don’t use any ground water.”

Professor Van Kooten thinks this technique could be an important export product.

“If we continue like this, the only water we use will literally be the water in the product. To produce a kilo of tomatoes, you will only need a litre of water.”

Ground heat

Water is pumped from a depth of
three kilometers (Photo: RNW)

The use of the ground heat to heat the greenhouses is just as important. Ted Duijvestijn has drilled a 3-kilometre-deep shaft to heat his tomato greenhouses in Pijnacker. The system pumps salt water which is 75 degrees Celsius upwards to the greenhouses. Once the water cools it is pumped back into the ground, where it reheats again.

The system, which was installed in March, is already making 60 percent savings. Once the electric pumps are powered by his own windmills, the greenhouses will more or less only run on sustainable energy. There will even be excess energy and warm water produced so that greenhouse owners will also become energy suppliers.

LED lighting

Rob Baan uses four colours in
LED-lighting (Photo: RNW)

And then there are the lights which are used to help plants grow. Vegetable grower Rob Baan has replaced his with low-energy LED lights which give exactly the right colour. Next to the greenhouse is a windmill to provide the energy for the LED lights.

In the summer the greenhouses are heated by the sun, producing temperatures above 50 degrees. Excess warmth is used to heat water, which is stored underground for the winter.

No pesticides

Wouldn’t it be easier to cultivate food in regions where no greenhouses are needed. Mr Baan very firmly says “No.”

“There are no insects here. Our greenhouses are either free of insects or we have predators in the greenhouses which eat them. We do not spay pesticides on the plants. Our production methods are becoming more and more sustainable. In the future, these kind of farms will be built close to cities, so that food can be produced locally.”

Meanwhile he has started up his own businesses in the United States and Japan.

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In the Country’s Water Wars, Nuclear Technology Is an Ally

Jakarta Globe, Ismira Lutfia | April 24, 2011

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The ongoing crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has understandably made most people averse to the idea of anything nuclear.

So it might be surprising to learn that nuclear technology is already being used in Indonesia. Even more surprising, it is being used to maximize the use of water resources.

Wibagyo, from the Center for Isotope and Radiation Technology at the National Nuclear Energy Agency (Batan), said stable and safe nuclear isotopes were being used to determine the volume of available freshwater and groundwater in the country.

The isotopes, he said, are disseminated in the upstream areas of rivers, where there are ample ripples to ensure the perfect mix of isotopes and water.

After the isotopes are dispersed, the water downstream is tested to determine the river’s volume, said Wibagyo, who is the head of the Hydrology and Geothermal Nuclear group at the isotope center, which is also known as Pitir Batan.

“The isotopes are also used to map the flow of underground rivers in caves in areas where the surface is predominantly limestone, such as in Gunung Kidul,” he said, referring to a dry area in Wonosari district in the southern part of Yogyakarta.

This underground mapping is useful in preventing water from being pumped from the streams up on the surface, he added.

In a visit to Indonesia earlier this month, Kwako Aning, the deputy director general for technical cooperation at the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the global nuclear regulator was concentrating on raising awareness of how atomic technology could be useful for water, a resource that is becoming scarcer in many parts of the world.

Aning said that apart from being useful in determining the availability of underground water reserves, stable isotopes could also determine how much reserves had been used.

These isotopes, he added, can also determine the nutrients contained in the water, so that when the water is used for irrigation, the farmers “will not overfertilize their farms.”

A joint study conducted by Batan and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources in the 1990s showed that the common perception that groundwater in Jakarta originated in the Puncak area was incorrect.

“We found out that the water in Jakarta actually comes from the Depok and Cibinong areas,” Wibagyo said.

Nuclear technology opponents have advocated the use of other energy resources such as geothermal instead of the establishment of nuclear power plants. But Wibagyo said that nuclear technology would still have a role to play.

“We’ve used nuclear technology to monitor available water reserves surrounding geothermal vents to determine if there would be a generous supply of water before exploiting the geothermal vents,” Wibagyo said. He added that large water reserves were essential to a geothermal plant’s steam-generating process.

“Geothermal vents would not be exploitable without enough water supplies surrounding them,” he said.

Although nuclear technology is used in almost all aspects of life, the IAEA’s Aning said it had still not gained acceptance with many people because of what he called a “misunderstanding.”

He said the idea of nuclear power being only a destructive force had carried over from the devastating atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II.

“So it is imprinted in our genes that this technology is wrong,” he said, adding that the key to making the best of nuclear technology was to use it securely and safely.

“There should be no problem with it if it is used properly,” he said. “Without safety, this technology is useless, so the key is to use it safely.”

Aning lauded Indonesia for being a pioneer in nuclear technology. The country has used the technology to enhance various sectors such as food, health and water management.

“Indonesia has been ready since decades ago to apply nuclear technology in many fields,” he said.

But he added that in response to the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, IAEA member countries were scheduled to convene a ministerial meeting in June to review the standard safety procedures surrounding nuclear technology in their respective countries.

Indonesia’s science and technology attache in Switzerland, Syahril, who was in Indonesia to accompany Aning, said the IAEA hoped Indonesia could take the lead in the region for the innovative and safe application of nuclear technology.

Using Well Water, 4 Factories Raided in East Jakarta

BERITAJAKARTA.COM — 4/20/2011 

To minimize excessive illegal ground water usage, Jakarta Environmental Management Agency (BPLHD) raided four factories which suspected having illegal wells. They are PT. Lion Metal Work, PT. Duta Mega Matra Keramik and PT. Indonesia Acid which located in Jl. Raya Bekasi, Cakung, and PT. Wasa Mitra Engineering in Jl. Raya Cacing, Cakung, East Jakarta.

According to Ridwan Panjaitan, Head of Law Enforcement for BPLHD who is also the raid leader, the factories raided because they still not use piped water (PAM) even though its pipelines already exist in the area. From the investigation conducted, PT. Lion Metal Work was found only have one well with the capacity of 386 cubic. In the permit, the ground water should be used only as water reserve, but based on investigation result on the field it is used as the main source. "This investigation usually takes one week,” he said, Wednesday (4/20).

Other companies also have wells. PT. Duta Mega Matra Keramik has two wells with each capacity 381 cubic and 23 cubic, PT. Wasa Mitra Engineering has one well with capacity 386 cubic, and PT. Indonesia Acid has three wells with each capacity 392 cubic, 338 cubic and 260 cubic. "Ideally, they should’ve use PAM water, because continues using of ground water will cause negative impact," he said.

Cheating that usually happens on the field is a company made well but without BPLHD permission. Sometimes, the water meter PAM installed is tricked with certain objects so the meter does not run as it should be but the water still flows normally. Moreover, the meter seal is also destructed. "This control is to optimize water PAM usage and suppress ground water (ABT) abuse that is not in accordance with the regulation exists," he stated.

Based on Jakarta BPLHD 2009-2010 data, there were 122 business activity locations given a warning, 44 sealed, and 72 concreted. There were also Rp 4.9 billion civil sanctions for 12 business activity locations because they use water ground without any permission and did not pay the tax. Even, four laundry companies were sanctioned by West Jakarta District Court and fined Rp 15 million each with subsidiary four months confinement.

While in 2011, BPLHD has conducted supervision on 117 locations until March. From that amount, 28 of them sealed and 9 concreted.