Adianto P. Simamora, Jakarta – There are certain sights that are representative of Jakarta: bajaj (motorized pedicab), street vendors, Metro Mini (public minibuses), empty luxury apartment buildings and, it would seem, the septic tank.
Only around 2 percent of the city's waste water is treated properly – everything else runs through the roughly one million septic tanks that handle "black" (flushed) water.
City sewerage company PD PAL Jaya says that of the eight million people officially living in the city, only 220,000 use pipe waste facilities to manage their black and "gray" (used for washing and bathing) water.
The figure is far behind that of other Asian capital cities. All of Seoul's 9.7 million inhabitants use piped sewerage, 35 percent of Bangkok's population does and in Manila, 16 percent of the population use official means of treating waste.
Setyoduhkito, operation and maintenance division chief at PAL Jaya, said that the use of septic tanks should only be allowed in areas with a population of less than 100 people per hectare.
"Areas with more than 300 people per hectare should practice a piping system to manage waste water," he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
The company said that all parts of Central Jakarta needed to be using a piping system to handle waste water, while most parts of Jakarta's other four municipalities should be part of a communal sanitation system. Only residents of Cilincing, North Jakarta and Jagakarsa in South Jakarta are eligible to use septic tanks.
Most gray water from Greater Jakarta households currently ends up poured directly into the city's drains, and is believed to be a main cause of pollution in groundwater.
Setyoduhkito said most of the city's septic tanks were in violation of technical guidelines issued by the Public Works Ministry.
PAL Jaya has a monopoly on the management of the city's sewerage system. Since its establishment in 1997, however, the company has set up just 45,000 meters of pipes, serving only the Sudirman and Kuningan areas.
The company said that financial issues prevented it from expanding to Jakarta's other municipalities. "To serve all parts of Central Jakarta, we need at least Rp 1.7 trillion to build new pipes," he said.
Waste and gray water is currently treated at a plant in Setiabudi before being dumped in the east channel flood river. "We only dump the water in the river if its biological oxygen demand (BOD) percentage has reached 50 milligrams per liter," he said.
PAL Jaya has previously said that it would need Rp 2.56 trillion to build sewerage systems on Jl. Thamrin and Gajah Mada in Central Jakarta, Kali Grogol in West Jakarta and Pantai Mutiara and Kali Ancol in North Jakarta.
An additional Rp 3.55 trillion is needed to construct a system for Tanjung Priok. The city administration and the central government, however, are yet to respond to PAL Jaya's proposals.
The head of the liquid waste and drinking water unit at the National Development Planning Board, Nugroho Tri Utomo, said Indonesia had spent only US$820 million, or Rp 200 per person, on the sanitation needs of the country over the last 30 years. He said Jakarta ideally needed to be spending Rp 47,000 per person annually on sanitation.
Setyoduhkito said even people living near PAL Jaya's facilities were reluctant to use its services. "The households are still slow to switch to piped waste treatment, even though we only charge them Rp 75 for each cubic meter of their building," he said.
The Jakarta Environmental Management Agency said that about 80 percent of the city's groundwater had been so polluted it was no longer safe to drink, while most Jakarta's rivers have been heavily polluted by household and factory waste.
A significant proportion of the city's population relies on groundwater. Health Ministry data shows that of ever 1,000 babies born in the city, 50 die of diarrheal diseases, often caused by drinking water polluted with fecal matter.