Firm action urged on Suwung landfill

By Agnes Winarti 

Published in Bali Daily/The Jakarta Post Wednesday, February 20 2013

Despite the performance failures of the private landfill management company PT NOEI and the alarming mountain of garbage in Suwung landfill, the four administrations whose trash is managed there are still reluctant to make a move, either to revise or terminate the contract, and seek a more competent operator.

In 2004, the company signed an agreement with the administrations of Denpasar, Badung, Gianyar and Tabanan, locally known by the acronym Sarbagita, to jointly manage and process waste at Suwung landfill.

However, nine years later, PT NOEI is considered to have failed to properly manage the waste and comply with the agreement.

“Since 2010, BPKS Sarbagita Sanitation Agency has reported to the four administrations about the breaches, including the absence of gasification machinery. But the decision must be taken by the administrations. Apparently, they still doubt whether they will be able to continue operating the landfill without a dumping fee,” said head of BPKS, I Made Sudarma.

“The Sarbagita administrations, during a meeting in Jakarta on Jan. 21, announced they were ready to contribute. However, they have not agreed on the fees,” said Sudarma.

While acknowledging insufficient knowledge of waste management back in 2004, PT Navigat Organic Energy Indonesia (NOEI), today still expects a revision of its 20-year waste management contract.

“Back in 2004, waste characteristic was not a consideration. We assumed that the waste here was similar to Europe, which is already sorted into organic and inorganic waste. Waste management techniques were not understood well by us and other people in Indonesia back then,” PT NOEI’s president director Agus N. Santoso told Bali Daily on Tuesday, despite the fact that the company has never operated in any European country.

When the 20-year contract to manage Bali’s largest landfill in Suwung was signed in 2004, PT NOEI was a newly established company, having been founded in 2003.

The unsorted waste, high-level of dampness and seawater penetration due to the proximity of the 38-hectare landfill to the ocean, were among the factors Agus claimed to be causing the company’s failure to comply with its 2004 contract.

In the contract, PT NOEI had declared that it would be able to produce 9.6 megawatts (MW) of electricity daily by managing the waste dumped in Suwung landfill through three types of technology, referred to as GALVAD, or gasification, landfill gas and anaerobic digestion.

The 9.6 MW of electricity was to comprise 4 MW from methane gas extraction and anaerobic digestion, also known as composting, and 5.6 MW from a high-tech gasification technique that requires heavy machinery.

It took the company around four years from the signing of the contract before it began producing electricity. Nonetheless, the production volume of only 1 MW daily has never reflected the target boasted of in the contract. As of today, PT NOEI has only been able to produce a mere 500-kilowatts per day from composting.

Agus admitted there had been a decline in electricity production since October as a result of a one-week fire that had occurred in the landfill.

Since October, the so-called integrated waste management facility has also been operating without the direct supervision of an operational manager because the in-charge manager has been assigned to work at PT NOEI’s other massive project, the Bantar Gebang waste management facility in Bekasi, West Java.

Agus acknowledged that today, nine years after the contract, the gasification machinery from the UK had never been installed in Suwung.

“We have not imported the machine yet,” said Agus, citing that the company had spent Rp 160 billion (US$16.4 million) to fill the Suwung peat land, pay salaries to some 100 staff, build a bridge and roads in the compound, and to build an office building.

The company has also installed an electricity network and generator, as well as a waste sorting facility, which remains idle to date due to the absence of the gasification equipment.

“Currently, there are many scavengers on the landfill. They are the ones who sort the waste,” said Agus.

In response to questions on the long queue of garbage trucks at the landfill, mentioned by the Denpasar Mayor Ida Bagus Rai Dharmawijaya Mantra in a recent public hearing, Agus also had his reason. “The long queue was caused by the damaged road to the landfill. But it is not PT NOEI’s responsibility to fix that road, there is 28 hectares of landfill not under our authority. It is still under the authority of the public works office,” he said, arguing that PT NOEI’s jurisdiction covered only 10 hectares of the Suwung landfill compound.

PT NOEI has requested revisions to its contract since 2010. Among the revisions demanded was for the 38 hectares of land to be under the company’s authority. After previously saying he forgot the details of the proposed revisions, Agus admitted that a dumping fee, or fee charged to the administrations to manage their waste at the landfill, was one of them. Reportedly, PT NOEI has proposed a fee of Rp 250,000 per ton of waste.