The dirtiest river on the planet.

This morning I saw a programme on the TV about the dirtiest river on the planet. It was a very scary programme, showing how people pollute the nearby river, even though it's essential for their survival un the area.

Picture downloaded at Pixabay.com.
Luckily people have started cleaning the river.

In the western part of the island Java, Indonesia, the river Citarum stretches for approx. 300 km. It is one of the largest, longest and most important rivers in West Java.
The river is important as it supports agriculture, water supply, fishing, industry, sewerage and electricity.

Due to the lack of a general garbage policy, people in the nearby villages dump their garbage in the river, even though they know that they are dependant on a clean river for the above mentioned reasons.

Along the river, the is a heavy textile industry, that uses the water from the river, and then leads their sewage right back out in the water without cleaning it.. In the TV programme, they sailed up and down the river, often passing areas where the river was either red, blue, green or other colors, because of uncleaned sewage from the textile industry.

The river has very high concentrations of lead, mercury and other toxins, making human life and evolution very difficult.

Asking the local population about laws on the area, they answered that the government had made laws about uncleaned sewage, but they never enforced these.

A worker on one of the factories told that the polluting sewage was lead out into the river around midnight, when nobody was watching.
So the industry is very aware of the laws, and they are breaking them on purpose.

It pretty early became perfectly clear, that the government just don't care, or maybe they don't have the ressources to enforce its own laws...This is, to me, where the international society could really do something, either putting some pressure on the Indonesian government, or helping them out economically or with know-how..
One thing is absolutely certain, if nobody does anything, this problem will just get worse..

Picture downloaded at Pixabay.com.
Around 10 million people are depending on clean water from the river Citarum.
Another thing that struck me is that local people KNOW that dumping their garbage in the river will destroy it in time, destroy the eco-system, and still they do it..
I know that this could be due to the lack of a public policy on how to deal with garbage, and once again, I think the Indonesian government is running from their responsobilities, maybe again they are lacking money or ressources...

The international society could help Indonesia here again...either with money or know-how, and they should!!!

This is a global issue, the lack of money, but especially know-how is one of the main reasons to the worlds #pollution, but luckily know-how is fairly easy to spread, we just have to help eaxh other.
We face the same issues in South America, Africa and other parts of Asia too, where people, especially out in the small villages don't have the knowledge, and they don't have the back-up from their local governments..

So my appeal to the international society is to either put some pressure, or provide the economical aid and know-how to these governments, we owe it to the planet🙂

Thanks for reading, would love to hear what YOU think about this issue, so feel free to leave a reply🙂

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