Murky Rivers and Pollution: Denpasar, Bali

By Barrie | July 19th, 2007 | No Comments

A man stood with his fishing pole in front of Suwung Dam, near the border of Denpasar city and Badung regency. He recoiled slightly from the stench coming from the greenish water. All along the riverbanks were piles of rotting garbage.

He picked up his fishing pole and went home.smell is horrific. I was about to fish but I changed my mind,” Sonic Iscinaro said.

Despite the smell and garbage, there were a few people brave enough to drop their lines in the murky water.

“Crazy,” Sonic murmured.

Bali’s rivers are faced with a serious pollution problem, with garbage piling up on the banks and chemicals polluting the water.

The Bali chapter of the Environmental Impact Management Agency found in 2006 that dozens of rivers in the province had unhealthy levels of pollution.

Badung River, which leads to Suwung Dam, was found to be contaminated by detergents, oil, nitrates and E. coli bacteria, which can cause cholera and diarrhea.

Twenty-one other rivers in Bali were found to have pollution levels ranging from minus 30 to minus 70, with 0 considered a safe level.

This island’s rivers are being contaminated by both domestic and industrial waste.

Industries are required by law to treat their waste before releasing it into rivers, but the degree to which they live up to this requirement varies.

Untreated domestic waste flows directly into the rivers.

“The level of BOD/COD in Bali’s rivers is at unsafe levels. That’s why we need a good wastewater management system,” the head of the Public Works Ministry’s Agency for Bali’s Garbage and Sanitation Infrastructure in Denpasar, Badung, Tabanan and Gianyar, Wayan Budiarsa, said.

BOD is Biochemical Oxygen Demand and COD is Chemical Oxygen Demand. Both are used to determine the quality of water. Thirty mg of BOD/COD per one liter of water is considered safe.

“Currently, Bali’s rivers that flow through densely populated areas such as Denpasar and Badung have a level of up to 170 mg per one liter of water. That’s far above the standard,” he said.

Budiarsa also heads the Denpasar Sewerage Development Project, which is working to improve wastewater management in Denpasar, Sanur and Kuta hope this sewerage system will be able to decrease the pollution levels of rivers and in the end make this island cleaner,” he said.

For areas such as Denpasar, Sanur and Kuta, which are visited by thousands of tourists every year, sanitation and wastewater management are essential.

“Due to bad sanitation and wastewater management, in 1994, there was a cholera outbreak, in which a number of tourists from Japan contracted the disease. Tourist numbers plunged after that. Therefore, we need a good wastewater management system to prevent those kinds of outbreaks from ever occurring again,” Budiarsa said.

The Rp 400 billion project started in 2004 and is scheduled for completion in October 2008.

“Some parts of Denpasar will be able to utilize the system this year,” he said.

He said 30 percent of downtown Denpasar would be connected to sewers, while 40 percent of Sanur, Legian and Seminyak would be connected.

“There will be 10,000 connections with a total length of 130 kilometers,” he said.

The system will cater to houses, offices and hotels.

“But not industries, because they have to provide their own waste management systems,” Budiarsa said.

He noted, however, that as long as people keep dumping trash into rivers, the wastewater management system will be unable to end the pollution problem.

“The rivers will still be dirty, not with chemicals, but with garbage if people don’t keep them clean.”

Prodita Sabarini