West Java Governor Ridwan Kamil confirmed that the quality of water in Citarum River has reached a level safe for conducting fish cultivation and irrigation, as the river’s pollution levels has declined.
Governor Kamil stated, as per the West Java Government Public Relations team press statement received in Bandung on Wednesday, that the water quality at Citarum River had reached a “mildly polluted” level despite the river normalisation programme earlier targeting the water quality to reach a “moderately polluted” level.
During the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, Governor Kamil expounded that the West Java government had enacted the “Citarum Harum” (Fragrant Citarum) river normalisation programme to control pollution levels in the river, with himself presiding over as the programme’s task force head.
He noted that the water quality index at Citarum River, earlier recorded at 33.43 points in 2018, had improved to 55 points in 2020 following the application of extensive interventional measures focused on river normalisation.
The authority’s normalisation of the Citarum River drainage basin involved planting trees in 26,231.24 hectares of critical land in the drainage basin region, surpassing the 2021 target earlier set at 15,516.99 hectares, the governor stated.
The task force aimed for conducting normalisation of 80,174.99 hectares of land in the drainage basin and achieving a water quality index of 60 points by 2025, Kamil stated.
Apart from interventional steps taken at the river and the drainage basin, other measures adopted to improve Citarum’s water quality entailed managing 2,700 tons of waste daily and 33,868 floating net cages, he added.
Meanwhile, West Java Environment Office Head Prima Mayaningtyas stated that several parameters have shown that industrial waste contamination in Citarum River and its drainage basin had decreased since 2019 and 2020, as industry and household waste ending up in the river had reduced by 42 percent in the last two years.
“The chemical oxygen demand in the drainage basin has also decreased this year and is reaching a level close to an acceptable standard,” she pointed out.
The 270-kilometre-long Citarum River, the longest in West Java, is a source of water for 18 million residents in the province’s 13 cities and districts that it traverses through.
Source: Antara News