Like a Hollywood horror movie the monster from the depths was released on an ordinary Monday afternoon five years ago.
It was almost the end of May 2006 and I was driving home to Surabaya, the capital of East Java and Indonesia’s second largest city.
The previous couple of days had been spent in Malang, a 90-minute drive south, visiting relatives. A typical weekend. But this time there were problems.
Entering the toll road near Sidoarjo, about 30 kilometres short of our destination the normally free-flowing traffic was snarled. It hadn’t been raining – this was the dry season – but the road was awash with muddy water.
So were the paddy alongside – and the water was moving fast, swamping the young rice. Mechanical diggers and men with hoes were trying to clean a clogged ditch. About 200 metres away a white cloud was billowing from the mud, hiding a giant rig that had been working there for weeks. The rotten-egg stench of hydrogen sulphide answered the question every motorist was asking.
There’d been a gas and liquid blowout.
During the next few days Indonesians were assured the problem would soon be solved, though there was much confusion about the cause.
As the days rolled into months and the mud and gas continued to gush, weird plans to shut the flow were suggested, including dropping giant concrete balls into the well mouth. Then large sums were offered to religious leaders and paranormals to pray for a cessation, which they did with great ceremony and certainty.
Nothing worked.
Now jump to the present. What’s come to be known as the Lapindo mud volcano (after the company running the project, PT Lapindo Brantas) continues to spew out an estimated 30,000 cubic metres of hot mud a day. It’s reported to be the biggest disaster of its kind in the world.
Two years ago Australian expert Dr Mark Tingay from Perth’s Curtin University of Technology claimed the belching could last for 30 years, and that the area was slowly sinking. His estimate of the damage was then US$4.9 billion.
Huge levees built to contain the slime are frequently ruptured and have to be raised even higher. Enterprising locals have put ladders up the banks so tourists can pay to get a better view of the boiling mud.
At least 40,000 people have been displaced, losing their homes, farms, businesses, factories, schools and places of worship. Thirteen have died. The damage to the economy mounts daily; Surabaya is an industrial hub and the road and rail links to Malang are the main traffic arteries for East Java’s 38 million people
A bridge on the toll road was demolished when it started to sink, and a new by-pass is slowly being built. In the meantime motorists pay motorcyclists to guide them through jalan tikus (rat roads) the maze of narrow potholed lanes that connect nearby villages and so avoid highway traffic jams.
The 80 kilometre journey between Malang and Surabaya can now take five hours or more.
But the real victims are the villagers who can see only a few terracotta tops to mark their once thriving communities. This time last year hundreds protested at the alleged lack of adequate compensation, though the government and company says it has paid out millions.
About 8,000 householders have been getting $US 1,500 monthly payments from the company from a $US 400 million fund, but these have been stop-start. Just ahead of the fifth anniversary of the blowout East Java Governor Soekarwo (one name only) said that PT Lapindo Brantas still owed victims about $US53 million.
The Australian company Santos, which held an 18 per cent stake in the project, set aside almost $AUD 80 million for liabilities, and in 2008 offloaded its stake for $AUD 24 million.
There’s been no independent open audit of who is paying what, though the government seems to be footing the bill for repairs and infrastructure to contain the mud.
The government’s imposed deadline for full settlement is the end of 2012
Compare these figures with the $US 40 billion that oil company BP set aside to deal with last year’s oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico
More demonstrations are likely as victims claim they still haven’t been given full value of their homes and land. Even in areas not yet flooded residents have fled their homes and shops creating gouged streetscapes looking more like a war zone, the stench of gas adding to the image.
Indonesia’s cumbersome and corrupt land tenure system, which doesn’t provide clear freehold title, is also to blame for slow payouts as residents struggle to prove ownership.
However the government in Jakarta failing to declare a national state of emergency has aggravated the disaster. The Republic’s lack of tough and enforceable environmental laws is also a handicap.
More responsible administrations would have rapidly sealed off the zone, relocated residents and then taken over the investigation and repair work. An independent judicial inquiry should have been held. Instead there have been piecemeal solutions and much blame shifting.
The company claimed the cause was subterranean fractures cause by a shallow 6.3 earthquake two days earlier at Yogyakarta that killed more than 6,000. However the drill site is 280 kilometres distant.
Last year a team of geologists led by Britain’s Durham University reported that faulty drilling practices were responsible for the blowout, and that the quake was a coincidence. They said the bore was not properly cased to withstand the pressures known to occur in that area.
The drillers have rejected these findings. Supreme Court action to determine fault was dismissed and a police investigation ended for “lack of evidence”. The government’s Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology declared the eruption a natural disaster.
Although Indonesia now purports to be a democracy no political party has seriously tried to make the event a national scandal. Some NGOs have tried, though with little success. The victims are too poor, too disorganised and too far from Jakarta.
At the time of the blowout most of PT Lapindo Brantos was part of the Bakrie Group owned by the family of Aburizal Bakrie, one of the most powerful businessmen and politicians in the Archipelago. He’s head of Golkar, the majority party in Parliament supporting the minority Democratic Party of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Then, but not now, he was also Minister for Coordinating Welfare.
Attempts were made to sell PT Lapindo Barantos to an offshore company for $US 2 but this was blocked by the government’s Capital Market Supervisory Agency.
This month (May) Sidoarjo’s Mudflow Mitigation Agency announced that dykes built to retain the flows are now in danger of collapsing because the ground is slumping under the weight of the mud. Distressing news, but not surprising.
The solution? Water is being pumped into the nearby Porong River but the mud mounts up. More catchment areas are needed for the sediments, but no one wants arsenic-laced silt on their land.
Should the eruption continue as forecast by 2040 many square kilometres of rich farming land will have been lost and scores more villages abandoned in one of the world’s most densely populated regions. Thousands more will have lost their livelihoods.
Indonesians, long used to government failures to take firm steps in natural or man-made disasters, have an acronym for the phenomenon – nato. No action, talk only.
(First published in On-Line Opinion 26 May 2011)
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FAITH IN INDONESIA
The shape of the world a generation from now will be influenced far more by how we communicate the values of our society to others than by military or diplomatic superiority. William Fulbright, 1964
Showing posts with label Lapindo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lapindo. Show all posts
Friday, May 27, 2011
Thursday, June 14, 2007
BAMBANG ADRIAN WENZEL
DRAWING THE PAIN OF PORONG © Duncan Graham 2007
The pain of Porong seems never-ending. Transport routes have been damaged and traffic disrupted, but the East Java village drowned by the continuously erupting Lapindo mud volcano has taken the biggest hit.
Though the villagers' problems haven't been resolved their plight doesn't pass unnoticed. There's a regular parade of impotent officials, gawkers and picture snappers, tut-tuting about the unstoppable outflow of gas and grime, and the anguish of the unfortunates caught in the environmental and bureaucratic mess.
Not all outsiders bemoan their inabilities to assist. Bambang Adrian Wenzel is a regular visitor from Malang. He's neither a geologist nor a desk jockey, but he's doing what he can to make a difference – as an artist.
He's sketched the faces of scores of children, emotionally crippled by a disaster that's already displaced an estimated 25,000 people. They've lost their homes, land, jobs, places of worship and schools.
It's a distressing environment. Many have also abandoned hope as the promises of help drown in the slime. The reality has been caught by Bambang in the kids' doleful eyes, disconnected from the carefree youth they were enjoying before they were prematurely forced into adulthood, trapped by the agonies of a problem they didn't cause.
"They're the innocent victims who have lost so much – including their childhood," Bambang said. "I first went to Porong last year with two artist friends from Jakarta.
"We decided that I should keep returning and drawing. Later this year we'll have an exhibition and sale in Jakarta where people will get a better chance to understand what's happening here in East Java.
"All the proceeds will be used to buy books for the children so they can keep learning. We certainly won't be handing out cash to officials."
For Bambang books are as important as canvases and brushes. He draws much of his inspiration from the Greek philosophers with Plato a favorite source.
"I'm interested in the ideas of democracy and human rights. Art is an offering to God and humanity," he said.
Bambang was born into a half Chinese, half Madurese family in the Java east coast town of Banyuwangi almost 50 years ago. After a short spell of formal art studies in Surabaya he moved to Malang "because it's a cultural city with a good artistic environment."
Since then he's maintained himself as a professional artist – a rare feat in an economy where there's little surplus cash for unconventional artworks. He's done this without having to compromise his time with other work, or corrupt his creativity by mass-producing touristy pictures.
The problem in keeping the rupiah river running is that much of his art doesn't fit neatly into the much-favored horses-galloping-in-surf or colorful-fishing-boats-in-harbor genres.
Nor does it meet the overseas visitor demand for soft-hue paintings of languid Balinese beauties. These are the standard lines that have kept his famous cousin, artist Huang Fong, well employed for the past half century by satisfying tourist fantasies of life in the tropics.
"I don't want to do this sort of work," Bambang said. "I'm trying to give more meaning to life. I mostly sell to collectors in America and Jakarta. I've exhibited in Australia and China, and Jakarta galleries handle my work.
"I enter a few exhibitions; I'm currently being shown in the traveling show A Beautiful Death that's been touring Bali and Java. But there's not a lot of interest in my art in Indonesia."
Probably because it's enigmatic, sometimes disturbing and wouldn't fit easily on the wall of a lounge where visitors are invited to relax. It's clear his Chinese antecedents are slowly pushing themselves into the foreground as his work moves from simple to complex and now includes oriental symbols.
A good example is a large picture (few of Bambang's paintings would fit in a Mercedes, though you'd need to be in that class to afford his art), of a broody hen, two freshly hatched chicks peeping from her fluffed-up feathers.
At first glance it's an image of warmth and security. Then you notice the tiny McDonalds logo reflected in the chicken's eye. This theme gets a more brutal treatment when the faces of beautiful women are eliminated in hardedge brush strokes that suddenly run out of paint – like TV images electronically smudged to mask the faces of the guilty or innocent.
Now he's working in multi-media, using slabs of stone to give a three-dimensional effect. He's much influenced by the confrontationist Lithuanian-Polish poster artist Stasys Eidrigevicius.
There are many Javanese cultural icons in his art, and images drawn from the old Buddhist-Hindu temples that surround Malang. These are mixed with religious symbols (he's a Catholic) and social commentary. He blends realism and the abstract.
One installation has a series of blurred monochrome photographs showing sacred texts surrounding a bright multicolored in-focus shot of a shopping mall. He's used this as a stimulant for discussions on the way religion and culture are being drowned by the neon-lit lure of materialism.
"During the Suharto era I felt constrained," he said. "It was difficult to express myself freely. I couldn't develop my creativity and had to be careful, particularly because I'm part Chinese and it would not have been wise to include that part of my culture in my paintings. Now I feel free. I'm learning Mandarin and I sign my art with my Chinese name.
"I could probably make more money overseas, but here I feel in touch with the environment that I love so much. I'm not money oriented. I believe that if you're an artist and serious about your work, good fortune will come to you."
(First published in The Jakarta Post 13 June 07)
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">Link
The pain of Porong seems never-ending. Transport routes have been damaged and traffic disrupted, but the East Java village drowned by the continuously erupting Lapindo mud volcano has taken the biggest hit.
Though the villagers' problems haven't been resolved their plight doesn't pass unnoticed. There's a regular parade of impotent officials, gawkers and picture snappers, tut-tuting about the unstoppable outflow of gas and grime, and the anguish of the unfortunates caught in the environmental and bureaucratic mess.
Not all outsiders bemoan their inabilities to assist. Bambang Adrian Wenzel is a regular visitor from Malang. He's neither a geologist nor a desk jockey, but he's doing what he can to make a difference – as an artist.
He's sketched the faces of scores of children, emotionally crippled by a disaster that's already displaced an estimated 25,000 people. They've lost their homes, land, jobs, places of worship and schools.
It's a distressing environment. Many have also abandoned hope as the promises of help drown in the slime. The reality has been caught by Bambang in the kids' doleful eyes, disconnected from the carefree youth they were enjoying before they were prematurely forced into adulthood, trapped by the agonies of a problem they didn't cause.
"They're the innocent victims who have lost so much – including their childhood," Bambang said. "I first went to Porong last year with two artist friends from Jakarta.
"We decided that I should keep returning and drawing. Later this year we'll have an exhibition and sale in Jakarta where people will get a better chance to understand what's happening here in East Java.
"All the proceeds will be used to buy books for the children so they can keep learning. We certainly won't be handing out cash to officials."
For Bambang books are as important as canvases and brushes. He draws much of his inspiration from the Greek philosophers with Plato a favorite source.
"I'm interested in the ideas of democracy and human rights. Art is an offering to God and humanity," he said.
Bambang was born into a half Chinese, half Madurese family in the Java east coast town of Banyuwangi almost 50 years ago. After a short spell of formal art studies in Surabaya he moved to Malang "because it's a cultural city with a good artistic environment."
Since then he's maintained himself as a professional artist – a rare feat in an economy where there's little surplus cash for unconventional artworks. He's done this without having to compromise his time with other work, or corrupt his creativity by mass-producing touristy pictures.
The problem in keeping the rupiah river running is that much of his art doesn't fit neatly into the much-favored horses-galloping-in-surf or colorful-fishing-boats-in-harbor genres.
Nor does it meet the overseas visitor demand for soft-hue paintings of languid Balinese beauties. These are the standard lines that have kept his famous cousin, artist Huang Fong, well employed for the past half century by satisfying tourist fantasies of life in the tropics.
"I don't want to do this sort of work," Bambang said. "I'm trying to give more meaning to life. I mostly sell to collectors in America and Jakarta. I've exhibited in Australia and China, and Jakarta galleries handle my work.
"I enter a few exhibitions; I'm currently being shown in the traveling show A Beautiful Death that's been touring Bali and Java. But there's not a lot of interest in my art in Indonesia."
Probably because it's enigmatic, sometimes disturbing and wouldn't fit easily on the wall of a lounge where visitors are invited to relax. It's clear his Chinese antecedents are slowly pushing themselves into the foreground as his work moves from simple to complex and now includes oriental symbols.
A good example is a large picture (few of Bambang's paintings would fit in a Mercedes, though you'd need to be in that class to afford his art), of a broody hen, two freshly hatched chicks peeping from her fluffed-up feathers.
At first glance it's an image of warmth and security. Then you notice the tiny McDonalds logo reflected in the chicken's eye. This theme gets a more brutal treatment when the faces of beautiful women are eliminated in hardedge brush strokes that suddenly run out of paint – like TV images electronically smudged to mask the faces of the guilty or innocent.
Now he's working in multi-media, using slabs of stone to give a three-dimensional effect. He's much influenced by the confrontationist Lithuanian-Polish poster artist Stasys Eidrigevicius.
There are many Javanese cultural icons in his art, and images drawn from the old Buddhist-Hindu temples that surround Malang. These are mixed with religious symbols (he's a Catholic) and social commentary. He blends realism and the abstract.
One installation has a series of blurred monochrome photographs showing sacred texts surrounding a bright multicolored in-focus shot of a shopping mall. He's used this as a stimulant for discussions on the way religion and culture are being drowned by the neon-lit lure of materialism.
"During the Suharto era I felt constrained," he said. "It was difficult to express myself freely. I couldn't develop my creativity and had to be careful, particularly because I'm part Chinese and it would not have been wise to include that part of my culture in my paintings. Now I feel free. I'm learning Mandarin and I sign my art with my Chinese name.
"I could probably make more money overseas, but here I feel in touch with the environment that I love so much. I'm not money oriented. I believe that if you're an artist and serious about your work, good fortune will come to you."
(First published in The Jakarta Post 13 June 07)
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">Link
Friday, January 19, 2007
THE PONG OF PORONG
THE STATE’S HIGHWAY – OR THE PEOPLE’S PARK?
© Duncan Graham 2007
Most weekends we drive to and from Surabaya and Malang, the two major cities in East Java. In the good old days BC (Before Crisis) the trip took about 90 minutes using a toll road that goes about one third of the way.
Now up to five hours can be the norm.
Since the last leg of the turnpike has been drowned by the Lapindo mudflow disaster, traffic has been diverted through the village of Porong. This road now bears all non-rail freight south and east of Indonesia’s second major city.
What was once a rural byway has become Indonesia’s most congested thoroughfare, its thin asphalt pounded and rammed, bashed and broken by steel axles and black rubber.
Forty-tonne container trucks, behemoths hauling 24-wheel log-laden trailers, inter-city busses steered by Formula One fanatics, rusting tankers sloshing with high-octane fuels and toxic chemicals, pick-ups overloaded with perishables, medicines and merchandise, squeeze between thin-skinned cars.
The three-lane highway becomes two, then one. This is where the Porong market spills and splashes into the road every day, starting before sunrise and dribbling into noon.
Now the huge smoking, steaming endless convoy gets mixed with pedicabs laden with limp vegetables pushed by wrinklies, motorbikes revved by dreadnought hoons, backblock rustbuckets delivering and dumping, kids on bikes double-dinking, plump mums shuffling through the mass and the mess, their arms tugged taut by bulging bags.
You think you’ve seen mayhem on Indonesian roads? You reckon you’ve tasted toxins, coughed clouds of carcinogens? Not unless you’ve savored the pong of Porong: This is the ultimate clogged artery, thickened by the cholesterol of maladministration.
Bottleneck? A ridiculous metaphor. Better think of pouring rice through a straw.
Since the earth started bleeding black mud and burping white gas last May all bids to halt the hemorrhaging have failed. So have attempts to intelligently handle the unstoppable surge of traffic pouring through Porong.
To put it politely – the authorities have stuffed up big time. But maybe they were always doomed; roads in regal Britain may be the Queen’s Highway, but in this Republic they belong to the people.
In a country where parks are few and recreation centers the preserves of the rich, the poor have no-where to go but the bitumen.
Having a wedding, a circumcision ceremony, a funeral? No need to hire a hall or book a mosque, church or temple. Just commandeer the area outside your home and tell commuters and commerce to go elsewhere.
Need to kick a football, fly a kite, swipe a shuttlecock? The tarmac playing fields may be hard and narrow, but they’re straight.
Need some funds? Set up a roadblock and man it with thugs ready to scrape knives down your paintwork.
Want to offer your wares but don’t have cash for a kiosk? Problem solved – your selling space starts at the kerb and spreads outwards. Bang a few staples into the concrete, add four props, a tarpaulin, bench and table – bingo! It’s business on the blacktop. All you need is gall.
In other countries impeding the free flow of traffic is a serious offence. Roads are reserved for vehicles. In Indonesia the highway is public open space where cars are intruders.
Grinding along in fits and starts, overtaken by limping pedestrians, trying to shrink from bulging bald tyres towering over your roof rack, it’s easy to damn the market folk of Porong for endangering us all.
But where else can these already damaged people go to trade? They’ve lost their land, their homes, their jobs, their schools, their places of worship. Some have lost their lives.
Sure they’ve been compensated with a cornucopia of fine words pouring out of Jakarta. These may sustain newsprint – but not life.
There must be space somewhere for a new market, but the civil authorities who are paid to handle such matters haven’t looked or haven’t negotiated.
So as you suck in the fumes and feel your tenure on life lessening with every lungful, praying a load won’t slip, a tank rupture or a truck tip while you’re alongside to make the trip terminal, please forgive the people of Porong for making your journey a misery.
Their lives are miserable enough already.
(First published in The SundayPost, 14 January 2007)
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© Duncan Graham 2007
Most weekends we drive to and from Surabaya and Malang, the two major cities in East Java. In the good old days BC (Before Crisis) the trip took about 90 minutes using a toll road that goes about one third of the way.
Now up to five hours can be the norm.
Since the last leg of the turnpike has been drowned by the Lapindo mudflow disaster, traffic has been diverted through the village of Porong. This road now bears all non-rail freight south and east of Indonesia’s second major city.
What was once a rural byway has become Indonesia’s most congested thoroughfare, its thin asphalt pounded and rammed, bashed and broken by steel axles and black rubber.
Forty-tonne container trucks, behemoths hauling 24-wheel log-laden trailers, inter-city busses steered by Formula One fanatics, rusting tankers sloshing with high-octane fuels and toxic chemicals, pick-ups overloaded with perishables, medicines and merchandise, squeeze between thin-skinned cars.
The three-lane highway becomes two, then one. This is where the Porong market spills and splashes into the road every day, starting before sunrise and dribbling into noon.
Now the huge smoking, steaming endless convoy gets mixed with pedicabs laden with limp vegetables pushed by wrinklies, motorbikes revved by dreadnought hoons, backblock rustbuckets delivering and dumping, kids on bikes double-dinking, plump mums shuffling through the mass and the mess, their arms tugged taut by bulging bags.
You think you’ve seen mayhem on Indonesian roads? You reckon you’ve tasted toxins, coughed clouds of carcinogens? Not unless you’ve savored the pong of Porong: This is the ultimate clogged artery, thickened by the cholesterol of maladministration.
Bottleneck? A ridiculous metaphor. Better think of pouring rice through a straw.
Since the earth started bleeding black mud and burping white gas last May all bids to halt the hemorrhaging have failed. So have attempts to intelligently handle the unstoppable surge of traffic pouring through Porong.
To put it politely – the authorities have stuffed up big time. But maybe they were always doomed; roads in regal Britain may be the Queen’s Highway, but in this Republic they belong to the people.
In a country where parks are few and recreation centers the preserves of the rich, the poor have no-where to go but the bitumen.
Having a wedding, a circumcision ceremony, a funeral? No need to hire a hall or book a mosque, church or temple. Just commandeer the area outside your home and tell commuters and commerce to go elsewhere.
Need to kick a football, fly a kite, swipe a shuttlecock? The tarmac playing fields may be hard and narrow, but they’re straight.
Need some funds? Set up a roadblock and man it with thugs ready to scrape knives down your paintwork.
Want to offer your wares but don’t have cash for a kiosk? Problem solved – your selling space starts at the kerb and spreads outwards. Bang a few staples into the concrete, add four props, a tarpaulin, bench and table – bingo! It’s business on the blacktop. All you need is gall.
In other countries impeding the free flow of traffic is a serious offence. Roads are reserved for vehicles. In Indonesia the highway is public open space where cars are intruders.
Grinding along in fits and starts, overtaken by limping pedestrians, trying to shrink from bulging bald tyres towering over your roof rack, it’s easy to damn the market folk of Porong for endangering us all.
But where else can these already damaged people go to trade? They’ve lost their land, their homes, their jobs, their schools, their places of worship. Some have lost their lives.
Sure they’ve been compensated with a cornucopia of fine words pouring out of Jakarta. These may sustain newsprint – but not life.
There must be space somewhere for a new market, but the civil authorities who are paid to handle such matters haven’t looked or haven’t negotiated.
So as you suck in the fumes and feel your tenure on life lessening with every lungful, praying a load won’t slip, a tank rupture or a truck tip while you’re alongside to make the trip terminal, please forgive the people of Porong for making your journey a misery.
Their lives are miserable enough already.
(First published in The SundayPost, 14 January 2007)
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