World Dirtiest River

There is the world’s most polluted river in the world that located in West Java, Indonesia.

The name itself is Citarum river. Citarum river has 35 millions people that rely on the Citarum

river, ‘bout 10 millions people live in Citarum, and the river become a toxic river in there.

Citarum river itself contain every kind of rubbish that can make starves the water oxygen and

polluted river, especially the kind of plastic waste which can’t be degrade for long years that

might be thrown by some villagers who don’t care ‘bout the terrible effect from that nasty

behavior. The Citarum river also contain some dangerous heavy metal and acid according the

research that has been looked up from few sample from Citarum water source, including the

drinking well which some villagers said is the most “clean” well in there. The dangers of heavy

metals are well documented, but no one is monitoring what they’re doing to the people who live

on the Citarum.

Some people are still looking for some earning from this environmental disaster, which is

they’re looking for some plastic waste, or maybe some contaminated fish from river to sell for

daily income. In matter of fact, ‘bout many years ago, Citarum river was a very good river to get

a catch of many fish, but nowadays the 60% population of fish has been vanished. The water of

Citarum river are used by villagers to drink and washing and the living of villagers got depends

on it. The population itself that passes through Majalaya industrial textille area are explode by

300% in the last 30 years.

And the problem that struggling to fix is, water from Citarum river is channeled through

this village, bringing a tide pollution with it, that seeping to the drinking wells and then got use

by the villagers that nearby from outlet of textile factory. These water channels are also open
sewers. People here know this is dangerous but they have no option, it was biggest concern is for

the villagers youngest residents. Some people are blaming the indusrial textile factories cause

dozens of their factory outlet along river stretch that might be dump their unprocessed textile

waste to the Citarum river. Ironically, More than half adults in that region work in textile

factories and in fact, 12 billions of that kind of industries helps to make Indonesia get the largest

economy in Southeast Asia.

But there is some environmental campaigner in this area that make some move to clean

this problems up, like blocking the sewer pipe from the textile factory nearby from Citarum

river, but literally didn’t effective. Indonesia’s association of textile manufacturers says it’s 200

members of the Citarum treat their wastewater but accepts the hundreds more textile factories

which don’t belong to their organization for untreated waste into the river. Over the last 10 years,

some environmental campaigner have tried to stop factories polluting the river by staging

peaceful protests, but result with little success, and then they’re changing tactics. When the

activists have carried out protests in the past, they claim they’ve been threatened.

The Indonesian government said it has shut down the factory for illegally dumping

chemical waste into the Citarum, but it wouldn’t disclose any details of the accidents, all named

the company. And what’s happening to the Citarum river is make some dangers for the local

people who live on it. But there’s similar stories in many countries as governments struggling to

cope with massive population growth and the need to provide jobs turn a blind eye to unfolding

environmental disasters.