To live and die along the Citarum: the most polluted river in the world

Nicknamed “the most polluted river in the world” by the World Bank, the Citarum with its almost 200 miles is the most important river in West Java, Indonesia. 

Although its water is dark, dense and cloudy, it is the primary source of water for about 30 million people living in the area between Jakarta, the Indonesian capital and Bandung, the heart of the country's industrial area. 
In the last 50 years a very bad management of trash and domestic waste and the lack of control over the discharges of the companies along the river have created a real environmental disaster. 

A report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has documented an extensive pollution and identified faecal coliform bacteria, probably derived from human agricultural sewage and fertilizers, up to 5,000 times the permitted level. About 9 million people, in fact, who live in rural areas and in small villages in close contact with the river, have always discharged the sewage of their homes into the river and, having no place to throw away the rubbish correctly, they have always burned or thrown into the river. 

But the most alarming figure comes from a study conducted by the Blacksmith Institute that found lead levels above 1,000 times the USEPA drinking water standard and levels well above the international average of other heavy metals like aluminum, iron and manganese. 

This is because in the area there are over 2000 companies - mostly textile factories built near the river because they need large quantities of water for their production - which in recent years have been left to discharge enormous quantities of chemical waste directly into the river.

Mountains of sediments, extracted from the bottom of the River, are piled on the banks and highlight the borders of the Citarum. There are thousands of them living on these new nobody's lands, on the portions of land and waste that have created new uninhabited areas on the banks of the river. Unemployed young people, families displaced by the frequent and disastrous floods or scavengers, the very poor waste collectors who survive by selling recyclable garbage: these are the majority of the slum dwellers near the polluted industrial areas near the river and the lands, of sediments and waste, along the banks of the Citarum.

In several of them, forced to survive in one of the most polluted areas of the world, they suffer from dermatitis, contact rashes, intestinal problems; but also delays in child development, renal failure, chronic bronchitis and a significant incidence of tumors.

The luckiest use waste water from the local industries, which draw water directly from the river or aquifers even at a depth of 150 meters and, after partially purifying it, make it available for neighboring villages. 

The others use waste and contaminated water from other villages, or directly from Citarum, to wash themselves and their clothes or to drink water and to prepare food. Also through the cultivation - mostly of rice, which are irrigated with contaminated water coming from factories and villages or from the Citarum river and its tributaries - elements harmful to the human body are daily ingested by the inhabitants of West Java and their animals who once consumed, they become part of the food chain. 

Even the catch, contaminated and rich in heavy metals and microplastics, is sold and consumed in the areas adjacent to the river as on the tables of Jakarta and fishing in fact, although the fish species have decreased by 60% since 2008, it is still widely practiced throughout the river. 

The Indonesian government, after countless complaints about the state of the river water including international bodies such as Greenpeace, it has allocated a seven-year cleaning program for the Citarum, with the ambitious final goal of making Citarum's water drinkable by 2025.

The program is also supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) which in 2009 had already committed to providing $ 500 million to finance the rehabilitation of the Citarum. The impressive cleaning operation consists in combating the erosion of the surrounding mountains through reforestation; to extract waste and sediments from the bottom and on the surface of the river with large excavators and to unload them on the banks of the river; to foribid factories from discharging wastewater from production processes until after filtration and purification and environmental education projects.
According to the environmental activists of the local NGOs, despite the bans many factories continue undisturbed to discharge their waste thanks to hidden drain pipes and that sometimes, even if discovered, are not obstructed due to the strong corruption that is rampant in the country. 

However recent environmental awareness campaigns are underway by the government and some environmental groups and a new wind seems to be blowing in Indonesia.

But at least for now, every day along the area of ​​the Citarum River, millions of people are still poisoned by coal-fired textile factories and by dumps of burnt waste without filters that release incredible amounts of dioxin and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the air; from the water of a river that in the past crossed an environment considered a paradise of nature and that now, according to the environmental activists, it kills at least 50,000 people a year due to diseases caused by incredible pollution.
To walk therefore, today, on the mountains of rubbish abandoned along the Citarum through the thick banks of poisonous smoke or to sail aboard the small boats of the scafangers in floating dumps; certainly it makes you feel more than in a paradise, in a damned hell: son of selfishness and short-sighted ignorance of men.

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