Life Along 'World's Dirtiest River'
The Indonesian government has embarked on a massive collaborative project to normalize West Java's Citarum River, considered the world's dirtiest, following a direct instruction from President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo.
The 300-kilometer river, which originates near Bandung and flows into the sea just east of Jakarta, is the third-longest on Java Island.
It is severely polluted, mostly with industrial waste from factories upstream, 68 percent of which are textile producers, according to Greenpeace.
Two nonprofit organizations, the New-York-based Blacksmith Institute and Switzerland-based Green Cross, listed the river as the world's dirtiest in 2013 after a study showed that textile producers dump an estimated 280 tons of toxic waste into the river every day.
Among the river's worst polluters are dozens of textile factories in Majalaya that dump chemical waste, said Arif Havas Oegroseno, a deputy at the Coordinating Ministry of Maritime Affairs.
His ministry is spearheading the campaign to achieve President Jokowi's ambition of making the water in Indonesia's most strategic river basin drinkable by 2025.
They are among the 28 million people who depend on the river waters, which supply Jakarta, support 400,000 hectares of rice paddies, sustain fish farms and fill reservoirs that generate about 2 gigawatts of hydropower.
Hundreds of soldiers were recently posted along the river to retrieve garbage, which gets burned as part of the ambitious program backed by more than 10 ministries, local government, community groups, the police and the military.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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